The whole reasoning behind this article was to show some slightly different tests that you might not seen anywhere else. While we showed you the general benchmark results when Bulldozer launched, we only touched on the gaming side of things ever so lightly, so we wanted to delve further into it, and that’s exactly what we’ve done with this analysis. We wanted to show how a CPU can impact gaming benchmarks and mainly how things compare between the AMD and Intel flagship models.
When we looked at the AMD FX-8150 in CPU intensive tests, it clearly showed that it was no real superstar and was a disappointment for a lot of potential customers, but gaming is never really looked upon in the same way, so we thought that we’d show you how it performs when we take a look at the processor from a different angle.
When looking at gaming, it did a really good job and this may not be completely clear at first, so let me explain in a little bit more detail. You may be flicking back through the results and feeling slightly let down, but you have to look at things from a slightly different perspective and we’re explain exactly why. The Core i7 2600k retails for £239 and the AMD FX-8150 retails for £199.98 which immediately shows you that the AMD FX-8150 gives better value for money, and when looking back at the results, we can see that the performance in gaming wasn’t too dissimilar, and even in some cases, we saw the FX-8150 come out on top.
Obviously our i7 2600k could clock further, but we wanted to show the test as a like for like comparison, hence using the same parts where we could, and even when we couldn’t, we tried to use the AMD/Intel counterparts to give the fairest tests possible.
Though we can’t fault the way it performed in this analysis, we do feel that Bulldozer is being restricted a little bit in the fact that no applications really utilise it’s full technology and hope to see this change in the near future. We can only sit and wait for game developers to start producing games with eight physical cores in mind, and then, and only then do we believe that Bulldozer will shine through, and who knows, maybe the price will even drop that little bit further.
We tried to focus on the gaming side of things, but we find that value comes into play a lot throughout Bulldozer discussions and it’s not just the processor, but the platform too. As we look at the likes of the Crosshair V Formula priced at £167.98, the equivalent Intel Maximus IV Extreme-Z is priced at a stonking £299.98 which is almost double leaving you with a decision of if £100 is really worth the extra money, if you’re going to see the same performance when gaming but for less. I know what I’d rather do, and hopefully AMD can focus on this as more applications and games are tailored for this new technology. It’s just a shame that nothing has been released currently to cater for this.
Would of been nice to see the Phenom II 6X 1100T in the review as well
That is just awesome!
awesome article!
just proves the point that modern games rely heavily on a good GPU rather than an awesome processor once the CPU bottleneck is overcome.
So considering BD is cheaper than a 2600K and so are the decent crossfire/SLI motherboards, maybe BD is, after all, a very good option for gamers as the money saved can go towards a faster GPU, hence better gaming performance!
If you read ANY other gaming performance review of the BD, you will see how terrible this tripe is.
I have no problem with the BD chip, but this "review" is dishonest. The numbers don't correspond with the same games reviewed on ANY other site. I wonder what resolutions were used.
dishonest in what way? We tested the games three times on each system to give the fairest results possible.
We used 1920×1080 on all of our tests, apart from the likes of 3DMark 11 where it has a pre-defined preset.
Settings vary between each game, but we aim to use the maximum settings where possible whilst maintaining a suitable frame-rate. With the likes of Metro 2033, max settings will give you 20FPS ish, which isn't suitable, so instead we use high settings opposed to very high to give that balance between performance and quality.
I am suprised at the 8150's performance considering other websites benchmarks, Although it seems eteknix is a more honest site and these results have just made me want to order a fx 8170.
Thanks, in other general benchmarks the FX does get outperformed by the i7 2600k but in gaming, they rely more on the GPU than the CPU and this is what is shown here.
The Tech Report did an article called "further overclocked" where they used AMD's new water-cooling setup(looks similar to the H70). When comparing the FX-8150 to the i7-2600k, the FX actually out performed the i7 in some areas.
"turning up the clock frequency allows the FX-8150 to put up some really nice numbers, tying or beating a Core i7-2600K overclocked to 4.5GHz in several cases."
When it comes to CrossFire/SLI, only Tweaktown and AlienBabelTech tested the FX8150 in that scenario. Its not looking pretty as it still shows AMD bottlenecking CrossFire/SLI setups.
Why overclock the CPUs? Why not test both using stock settings?
Why weren’t the power consumption and temperature numbers included? At 4.6Ghz, the FX’s power usage is outrageous. In the previous review it was idling at 209W and 439W at full load. That should be included, along with the Core i7-2600k’s numbers, which I know is no where close to that. You even wrote:
“Having a look at the power, we can see that at idle we have a fairly reasonable chip on our hands which shouldn’t run up huge electricity bills, unless of course you overclock where we see some massive hikes in power usage at both idle and especially at load.”
So how does it receive a “Gold” award, when the full review of the FX-8150 did not garner any award?