AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer VGA Performance Analysis

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.