AMD BD FX-8150 and Crosshair V Formula: My experience so far

[Kipper]

I am sure most of you have read as many different reviews of the FX-8150 as I have and have as many questions now as you did before the release a couple of days ago.

I just do not have the time to do an in-depth review but I did get the FX8150 setup on the CH5 and have it running fully stable right out of the box.

Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so your results will differ from what others might be able to get.


This what AMD has to say about possible Over Clocks with the FX-8150:





This is not a sample and I paid the full retail price for this chip so I will not be trying to take it to the limits and burn this baby up, I need to keep it fresh for the wife's next system.


I did a quick OC to 4.2GHz and ran a couple of what I call everyday real world benchmarks at least for some of main projects that I will be doing on this setup.







Maybe it's just me but I prefer to use AIDA64 for stress testing; it stresses the system at 100% CPU resources but is designed to stress all aspects of the processor as well as memory and drives.

I let AIDA Stress testing run for a little over an hour without any problems and the temps were kept below the 60° C that AMD recommends for this chip. I do have WC on the Processor with a 3X120mm Rad, Swiftech pump/res and a Swiftech Apogee XT rev 2 block.



I seem to always be working on HD video projects and I find that a great benchmark for this task is the x264 HD benchmark.

It is a reproducible measure of fast your machine can encode a short HD-quality video clip into a high quality x264 video file. It's nice because everyone running it will use the same video clip and software.

I ran this benchmark with the 4.2GHz overclock and the results were very good in opinion; right in line with the results I have attained with the 25/2600K processors.

It messures fps in two passes 4 runs utilizing all available cores. Here are the results:

Pass 1
------
encoded 1442 frames, 120.67 fps, 3911.61 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 120.05 fps, 3911.61 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 123.42 fps, 3911.61 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 123.42 fps, 3911.61 kb/s

Pass 2
------
encoded 1442 frames, 39.88 fps, 3959.95 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 39.91 fps, 3959.59 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 39.96 fps, 3958.89 kb/s
encoded 1442 frames, 39.96 fps, 3959.84 kb/s


I have a decent Blu-ray movie collection and with the cost of each movie running as much as 40.00 I prefer to watch the original disc one time and then make a backup for future use.


My favorite software for this is DVDFab's sub-program "Blu-ray to DVD". The time might seem long for some but when you figure that the video streams need to be ripped then compressed to fit on either a DVD DL or SL disc and finally burned, it seems quick enough for me anyways.






For those movies that are not available on Blu-ray and only on DVD-ROM (commercial movie) I still backup my personal copy of the disc with another nice tool (CloneDVD 2). This process is much quicker singe the video is only ripped and transcoded and can be burned at any speed your burner and media will allow.


In this case I used my ASUS burner as the source drive and the other ASUS burner as the destination.







I am not going to say that BullDozer is a huge success nor am I going to declare it a major failure, at least not for the time being anyways.


From my 3 plus days of playing with the processor and putting it through tests with every piece of software that I use for my computing needs I am satisfied that the FX-8150 will serve the needs and wants for the average (whatever that means) user. However, if you are wearing the moniker of an OC King and want your system running on the edge of stability and have the funds to pay those electric bills then I suggest you forgo BullDozer and go with a 2500K from Intel instead.


Well, there you have my thoughts on the FX-8150 and I am not an AMD type guy by no means. I am a true hard-core Intel nut-case but I must give an honest opinion based on my finding.

[Retired]

Why is the CPU temperature so much higher than the cores? Is TWPIN1 really CPU temp? Which one of those CPU Temp or CPU Core temp do I really care about?

[speed]

Core temp is the one to watch.

[NemesisChild]

Breeze, see my comments in post #4 in this thread.

[66racer]

Im like whatever with my results on bulldozer, My 1100t at 4244mhz out bench the 8150 at 4800mhz, even 5.0Ghz except for the programs that can really use all the cores. At the end of the day the 8150 is I feel just under utilized. I dont think its entirely AMDs fault. Everyone is hoping for magic bios and windows patch but I think if it was a winner "today" it would have been stronger regardless. Im sure it will get faster over time but I cant see it this year thats forsure. Im even thinking of selling it, not sure yet, I only have 3 days with my 8150 but am affraid to hold it any longer and loose 50% of my investment in it.

Here are my basic results on what I would feel good with 24/7, I can push it higher but temps get too close to 61c for comfort.

[liberato87]

66racer wrote:
Im like whatever with my results on bulldozer, My 1100t at 4244mhz out bench the 8150 at 4800mhz, even 5.0Ghz except for the programs that can really use all the cores. At the end of the day the 8150 is I feel just under utilized. I dont think its entirely AMDs fault. Everyone is hoping for magic bios and windows patch but I think if it was a winner "today" it would have been stronger regardless. Im sure it will get faster over time but I cant see it this year thats forsure. Im even thinking of selling it, not sure yet, I only have 3 days with my 8150 but am affraid to hold it any longer and loose 50% of my investment in it.

Here are my basic results on what I would feel good with 24/7, I can push it higher but temps get too close to 61c for comfort.

thanks for sharing this results.

how much vcore you set into bios?
what about load line calibration?
how much vcore into full load?
are you prime95 /linx or occt stable with these frequencies?

thank you

[speed]

Do not look at computer parts as investments you will lose.

[66racer]

speed wrote:
Do not look at computer parts as investments you will lose.

Your right, but right now would be the time to sell if Im not happy since its out of stock in most places, thats pretty much what I meant. The 8150 is a good cpu but wasnt really an upgrade for what I do. I should have and will be getting a second video card. I just really got it to have fun overclocking a new cpu. I kept it very conservative though, I just wish it at least matched the thuban cpu's clock for clock, thats all I was really hoping for and it would have been icing on the cake if it edged it out. The better memory controller in the FX lineup is a great addition though.

[Kipper]

You could disable 4 of the cores and OC the snot out of it.

LOL, I hate it when somebody tells me that. If I want a four core or less I would have got one. LOL

[NemesisChild]

We all knew from the benchmarks that the FX doesn't match up to the Thuban.

So this should have been no surprise to anyone.

[Retired]

AMD claims 10-15% performance increases under Windows 8 has anyone had the chance to install the developer preview?