AMD FX-8350 Review: Does Piledriver Fix Bulldozer's Flaws?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 23, 2012 @06:45AM from the driving-piles-and-dozing-bulls dept.

An anonymous reader writes "AMD just officially took the wraps off Vishera, its next generation of FX processors. Vishera is Piledriver-based like the recently-released Trinity APUs, and the successor to last year's Bulldozer CPU architecture. The octo-core flagship FX-8350 runs at 4.0 GHz and is listed for just $195. The 8350 is followed by the 3.5 GHz FX-8320 at $169. Hexa-core and quad-core parts are also launching, at $132 and $122, respectively. So how does Vishera stack up to Intel's lineup? The answer to that isn't so simple. The FX-8350 can't even beat Intel's previous-generation Core i5-2550K in single-threaded applications, yet it comes very close to matching the much more expensive ($330), current-gen Core i7-3770K in multi-threaded workloads. Vishera's weak point, however, is in power efficiency. On average, the FX-8350 uses about 50 W more than the i7-3770K. Intel aside, the Piledriver-based FX-8350 is a whole lot better than last year's Bulldozer-based FX-8150 which debuted at $235. While some of this has to do with performance improvements, that fact that AMD is asking $40 less this time around certainly doesn't hurt either. At under $200, AMD finally gives the enthusiast builder something to think about, albeit on the low-end." Reviews are available at plenty of other hardware sites, too. Pick your favorite: PC Perspective, Tech Report, Extreme Tech, Hot Hardware, AnandTech, and [H]ard|OCP.

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Re:How about idle?? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-23 10:11 · Score: 0, Troll

And, as I've stated elsewhere, it should be up to me to assess my needs. If the government has to meddle in order to choose a winner (or, in this case, a loser) that's not really a strong endorsement of the competing technology.
As to your point about halogens: please point me to an A19, 60 to 100 watt halogen bulb that costs a dollar or less. Oh wait, you can't. I'm well aware of the actual US ban (*cough* "efficiency standards"), so don't make presumptions.
Stop drinking the statist kool aid: incandescents are the best choice in certain everyday scenarios—and this is dealing solely with TCO, without even addressing subjective complaints about alternative technologies.