Review: AMD FX 8320E

Nice review, but why are you using P95 to measure power draw?

 

Very nice review...and just one more that illustrates the real luster of the current AMD FX series--its price moves it into direct competition with Intel's i5's, and the FX cpus walk all over the i5's in performance for the same money--more or less. It's simple: if you're on an i5-sized cpu budget you cannot do better than an AMD FX cpu at this point in time. (If the i7's had all been stripped out of these tables--which price pretty much dictates be done, anyway--the FX cpus would have dominated the performance results & the i5 would have looked very weak.)

AMD needs to step up its FX game, however, as--even as good as the FX cpus are--they're getting very long in the tooth. The 9000-FX series I can't recommend to anyone because of the ridiculous voltages they require, the *required* water-cooling, etc. Even with all of that they are scarcely faster than the FX-8000 series which are much more sensible and a far, far better buy. Anyone looking for an i5-priced cpu for his gaming rig need look no further than FX 8000 series (and below.) My FX-6300, for instance, more than two years old, runs all six cores @ an air-cooled ~4.5GHz at stock voltage and stock fan. > two years ago when I bought it it cost me $133 shipped to my door--it's the best AMD cpu I've ever had and I've owned nothing but AMD (at home) since 1999. The MSI board is great because it is socket AM3+ (and therefore amazingly compatible with a wide range of AMD cpus) & it's also afull UEFI board (as is the new 970 Gaming version of the G46-970a.)


AMD, though, drastically needs to "modernize" the FX line:

1) Use the Steam-roller (Vishera's too old!) core at a smaller FAB process! ASAP.
2) Market a new core-logic chipset with USB 3.x capability & supporting PCIe 3.x (My MSI G46-970a board at home, while excellent and 99.9% trouble free, supports only two 3rd-party USB 3.x ports and only PCIex2.x and lower PCIe bus support. (That's not bad at all, actually--but it hurts AMD on the marketing side of the fence--bunches of people buy nothing except numbers...)

AMD is already making Steamroller-core cpus in its APU products; and already supports
USB 3.x/PCIex3 in them, too--so it's difficult to imagine what the problem is in shipping these products. AMD has got to get back to basics in understanding that if you want to sell a thing to the public you have to sell them what they want to buy as opposed to what is more convenient to you. I hope AMD will make all the right moves in the coming year.

 

Vishera's successor when? If they really keep working on that until 2016 even or later, I'll
......well, I'll be waiting for longer than I'd like :/

 

amd is already a low budget choice for low budget customer ... every fx processor need 4.6ghz+ to beat a stock clock i7 4770k

 

Nah, even then i5/i7 will be faster. Its sad.

 

At least it is cheap.
If I buy new system for same money I paid over 3 years ago, I'll get from intel 10% performance boost.

I kind of disagree about 8core being useful today, 4Cores are getting around just fine. 6cores may be sweet spot for next 2 years.

But maybe I would take 6core carrizo if it came to desktop and was not held back by TDP limit.

 

At this rate AMD should jump straight to Excavator. Steamroller is already too old. But the problem is chipset compatibility. While AMD is certainly convenient trying to maintain compatibility with older chipsets, it holds them back and is a pain for motherboard developers, since BIOS updates will be required for new architectures. For example, to operate my FX6300, I'm using an AM3 board (not an AM3+) with a beta BIOS on an 890FX chipset. I don't think I'll be able to upgrade my CPU to steamroller or excavator.

On another note - PCIe 3.0 is utterly pointless. There is no performance gain whatsoever. The only reason you MIGHT want to consider it is with 3x SLi/Crossfire, where the 3rd GPU often runs at 4x. I would much rater see the proliferation of chipsets that can handle 4 full-sized PCIe slots at 16x at affordable prices than PCIe 3.0.


Anyway, if I had a reason to upgrade I would get this CPU. It's roughly the same power efficiency as my 6300 but another 2 cores - not bad.

AMD would have had significantly better ratings if they pulled this off the first time around when releasing PD.

 

Minor typo in the last paragraph:
for a couple od fays and really

Thanks for the review; for the price performance isn't too bad.

 

No AMD processor is intended to compete with an i7 although even my FX 6300 will outdo the older i7 920. They do however, compete with many of the i5's, especially in multi-core performance. This new chip looks extremely good at it's price point.

Talking about Motherboards and chipsets, my 6300 is doing just fine on a 780 chipset board with a stock BIOS.

As someone who will never overclock anything, that part of the argument is irrelevant to me.

 

You may be losing some power management features on a 780 chipset, especially with stock BIOS. But hey you're lucky to have one of the very few 700 series boards compatible with the FX series.

Out of curiosity, why not overclock? I got to 4.4GHz on air with many power-saving features enabled on my FX-6300. I could probably get to 4.6 or 4.7 if i disable all power-saving features and maybe 4.9 if I do liquid cooling, but I don't need that extra performance and I'd rather not rack up my idle power usage for a few extra hundred MHz.

 

Love the review, but the blue coloured bars all seem to blend into one colour for me and are very difficult to differentiate

Any change of using different colours than just blue?

 

There are a few games that can take advantage of faster bus, but, in general, the difference is small.

 

Ah interesting - I stand corrected. Last time I checked this, the GTX 980 wasn't involved. Nvidia must've done something different to really take advantage of the extra bandwidth for this generation, because IIRC the GTX 780Ti doesn't saturate the 2.0 bandwidth.

 

The performance is as expected. For those wanting the most value for their money, it is the best option, especially if you're not into overclocking. Obviously, the Intel loyalists are going to try to talk down this processor (just scroll up to see proof) but for the average user it's performance is just fine. Personally, I'd rather have an 8-core processor for $140 than a quad-core for $225+....but that's just me.

Now, what I don't get is why AMD is still pushing Vishera. I can't imagine that consumers are lining up to buy 2-year old processors.

 

They got nothing new to put out except decent apus. They gotta make money somehow. Although most if not all the people interested prob has vishera anyway.

 

They got Steamroller.... Though it's nothing really amazing itself, it's still better than Piledriver.

 

Agreed. BTW, weren't they working on a totally new architecture?

 

Yes, I heard they are doing a new one from scratch. AMD's new CEO seems promising.