AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer Processor Review

AIDA64 v1.81 Extreme Edition (Bulldozer Optimizations)
For testing the AIDA64 suite, Tamas Miklos provided us with the latest built of AIDA64 system benchmark & utility suite, which contains optimizations for Bulldozer architecture. The benchmark already contains all the optimizations for other tested microarchitectures such as Intel Sandy Bridge or AMD's STARS (K10.5). In AIDA64, we ran 13 different tests in order to as fully as possible measure the performance of Bulldozer against the competition. If you look at some of the scores, you will notice that most of the Intel processors were running at lower memory clock speeds than what we were running. The reason for this is because those tests were run at Intel's officially supported memory clock speeds. This is a point that should be addressed by Intel. They should, like AMD, support higher clock speeds than just 1066 and 1333MHz.



In our first test, we ran AIDA64's Memory Read test. In this test we found that the FX-8150 actually enabled the Turbo core option which had already been enabled in the bios bumping one of the cores to 4.2GHz. That, combined with the memory clock of 1866MHz resulted in a speed of 14,721MB/s just a little short of the i7-2600K processor. This is nearly double that of other AMD processors like the A8-3850 and the like. However, bear in mind that FX-8150 has maximum theoretical bandwidth of 29,856MB/s, while i7-2600 peaks at 21,328MB/s. As you can see, Intel created a much more efficient controller in Sandy Bridge.



In our AIDA64 Memory Write test we essentially got the same placement that we had in our Memory Read test, except for the fact that the i7's had actually beaten out the FX-8150 even though they were running at 1333MHz.



In the Memory Copy test, the FX-8150 processor shone brightly beating out all other processors with a score of 18,601 MB/s beating out all previous generations of i7 processors (even the triple-channel one) as well as AMD processors. This is most likely attributable to the fact that the AMD FX Platform supports higher clock speeds without requiring the user to 'overclock'.



For the Memory Latency test we expected the previous results to reproduce themselves and they did indeed. In terms of memory latency, we were running the memory in the system at CAS8 latency so there was a good chance we would beat out other platforms, but considering that most other platforms were also running lower clock speed RAM there was a good chance their latency would be lower. As a result it is great to see that AMD still has great memory latency and is bringing back the days of the Athlon 64 X2 latency performance.



Following the memory tests, we decided to run the CPU tests to see where the FX-8150 stacked up against all the other processors, what we found was pretty interesting. In the CPU Queen test the FX-8150 came in below all of the leading Intel i7 processors, but still above all but one AMD processor.



In the AIDA64 PhotoWorxx test we found some extremely interesting results considering the prevalence of photo editing and use in computing today. In this test, the FX-8150 Zambezi processor was bested only by the Xeon X5550 processor. In every other case the FX-8150 beat all of the i7 processors by a fairly decent margin.



For the Zlib benchmark that we ran in AIDA64, the Bulldozer processor performed pretty well. It was fair to say that it performed within expectations but it couldn't quite catch up to the Intel i7 2600 processor. This benchmark appeared to heavily favor processors with more cores, but yet the 2600 processor somehow managed to edge its way into the group.



In the AES benchmark we expected to see a huge improvement for AMD's performance due to the new instruction sets and added optimizations built into the Bulldozer cores and the Zambezi processor as a whole. We were not in the least bit disappointed as the FX-8150 simply dominated the test in nearly every single way and beat out every single processor that had been tested on the AES test beating the i7 990X by a healthy 10%.



In the hashing benchmark we were interested to see whether or not the FX-8150 would repeat its poor showing that we saw in Sandra and the good thing was, it didn't. The FX-8150 actually ended up placing second overall in all of our tests only being beaten by the Magny-Cours Opteron 2431 12-core processor. This test shows us that perhaps Sandra wasn't quite optimized for AMD's Bulldozer as the version of AIDA64 we were running came as part of a benchmarking package that we downloaded specifically for Bulldozer benching and monitoring.



We then ran some FPU tests in order to see how well the new Bulldozer FPU stacked up against other processors. What we found was that the FX-8150 didn't quite reach the performance of the Core i7-2600, but it did beat the Phenom II X6 by a decent margin as well as the A8-3850.



In the FPU Julia test the FX-8150 dropped a bit in terms of its placement and comparison, but it still performed approximately where it was expected. We would've liked to see it performing closer to the Core i7 990X, but it doesn't look like the Julia test really likes the Bulldozer architecture that much.



The FPU Mandel test was effectively more of the same. The FX-8150 performed about 10% faster than the Phenom II X6 1055T processor, but as still quite a ways away from the Core i7 2600 processor in terms of FPU performance.



The FPU SinJulia test was actually the most disappointing as we saw that the SinJulia test used the x87 instructions and the Bulldozer cores appear not to do that as well as its predecessor the Phenom II X6 processor. We're not quite sure whether or not it is an architectural flaw or if there needs to be an optimization made to fix this potential problem.

Cinebench R11.5


In Cinebench we really had no idea what to expect, so when we got our results back we were a little disappointed. In Cinebench R11.5 we scored 5.86 points with our setup. This could possibly be attributable to the fact that we did have issues with the ASUS motherboard initially which caused us days worth of delays. We were told that we should expect a score of around 6 on average. As such, this would put the FX-8150 on par with our Core i7-975 processor, not necessarily a comparison we'd like to be drawing considering how much older the Core i7-975 is. Hopefully the FX-8150 will redeem itself in other places.