The Vishera Review: AMD FX-8350, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 23, 2012 12:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Vishera is a step in the right direction for AMD, it manages to deliver tangibly better performance than last year's disappointing FX processor without increasing power consumption. Thanks to architectural and frequency improvements, AMD delivers up to 20% better performance than last year's FX-8150 for a lower launch price, while remaining within the same thermal envelope.
AMD does manage to pull away with some very specific wins when compared to similarly priced Intel parts. Performance in the latest x264 benchmark as well as heavily threaded POV-Ray and Cinebench tests show AMD with the clear multithreaded performance advantage. Other heavily threaded integer workloads also do quite well on Vishera. The only part that didn't readily beat its Intel alternative was AMD's six-core FX-6300, the rest did extremely well in our heavily threaded tests. Look beyond those specific applications however and Intel can pull away with a significant lead. Lightly threaded applications or those whose performance depends on a mixture of single and multithreaded workloads are typically wins for Intel. The story hasn't really changed in that regard. For AMD to become competitive across the board it needs significant changes to the underlying architecture, some of which I don't know that we'll see until the 2013 - 2014 timeframe. Even then, Intel's progress isn't showing any signs of slowing.
Power consumption is also a big negative for Vishera. The CPU draws considerably more power under load compared to Ivy Bridge, or even Sandy Bridge for that matter.
Ultimately Vishera is an easier AMD product to recommend than Zambezi before it. However the areas in which we'd recommend it are limited to those heavily threaded applications that show very little serialization. As our compiler benchmark shows, a good balance of single and multithreaded workloads within a single application can dramatically change the standings between AMD and Intel. You have to understand your workload very well to know whether or not Vishera is the right platform for it. Even if the fit is right, you have to be ok with the increased power consumption over Intel as well.
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klatscho - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
but at least priced decently.leexgx - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
still like how AMD think they have 8 full cores in there (some sites list the Modules not FP cores in their lists)8x is 4 Modules (4M/8T)
6x is 3 Modules (3M/6T)
4x is 2 Modules (2M/4T)
they hardly outperform stock clocked matched cpus (that they listed)
leexgx - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
also to add if you own an Bulldozer (or Vishera) type of cpu you should all ready have these patches installedhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594
Penti - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
There are 8 fully pipelined integer cores in there, they are just very weak. Some of it is the shared frontend/decoder some of it is the integer execution units themselves. Weak SIMD/FPU-performance isn't the only thing it got. It just does so much less. You don't have two pipelines with separate resources to achieve SMT/HT. They need wider execution here. Preferably dropping the shared front end thing too. Makes no point of having it around, focus on making it faster and dump all that cache which does no good. Mobile/Notebook chips can't really have 16MB of cache any way. Just a few MB.DDR4 - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - link
It's just a marketing thing, the cores don't have that much power, AMD's just looking to do better than Intel in one area.P39Airacobra - Wednesday, May 14, 2014 - link
And you base this on the first that came to your mind to make you feel better about you over paying for your wimpy little 4 core Intel CPU with half the power of a FX-8320. LOLP39Airacobra - Wednesday, May 14, 2014 - link
Just kidding I have a i5 myself, But guys you really should stop being such fanboys. AMD has a great Chip here with the FX-8320 and FX-8350. They are priced much lower than the top i5 CPU, And they will perform just as well in gaming if not better. And who cares about it using 125 watts? 125 watts is a bit more than what Intel's i5's use , But it can still be ran more than fine with a High end GPU with just a decent 600watt mainstream PSU like a CX600.spooky2th - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Intel i5's can handle faster memory than any amp chip. They have a stronger MC plus they OC very well too. With the 1155 socket the amd chips were barely keeping up. Since haswell the speed champs are intel cpu's hands down and with the z97 boards and the new processors that will only work with the 97 boards, look out amd! Better OC'ing and handling faster memory than before!DesiredUser - Friday, February 12, 2016 - link
Currently, FX-8350 costs over $200.Used Xeon 5647 costs just $50 and beats a crap out of it.
Both support ECC. Go figure.
Homeles - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
Because performance = core count. Brilliant.