AMD FX-8320E CPU Review: The Other 95W Vishera
by Ian Cutress on January 13, 2015 10:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
HandBrake v0.9.9: link
For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
For Low Quality conversion, the 8320E has trouble keeping up with the full-fat i3, but beats them by a good margin when the frame sizes open up.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
Dolphin historically prefers high IPC single core performance, which the 8320E is lacking.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
The eight threads of the FX-8000 series show through here, beating all the i3 and some of our i5 parts.
PCMark8 v2 OpenCL
A new addition to our CPU testing suite is PCMark8 v2, where we test the Work 2.0 suite in OpenCL mode.
Hybrid x265
Hybrid is a new benchmark, where we take a 4K 1500 frame video and convert it into an x265 format without audio. Results are given in frames per second.
For x265 conversion those extra threads end up highly beneficial for the FX-8320E, nudging inbetween our i5 data.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
While single thread performance is behind, the overclocked FX-8320E storms ahead of our FX-9590 results.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and results are given in seconds.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Sunspider 1.0.2
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
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happycamperjack - Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - link
That's why I put "maybe". It's definitely not an ideal game to use for benchmark that's for sure.Zap - Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - link
Games that people are playing? You mean those super demanding ones like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, right? Because those two games have the lion's share of active gamers and actual game time right now. Since WoW's latest expansion came out, the two combined (using Raptr numbers) are 35% of the actual time spent in game for all PC gamers combined, trailed distantly by DotA2 at around 5% in 3rd place. "Demanding" games like BF4 can't even break the top 10, and barely exceed 1%.jabber - Thursday, January 15, 2015 - link
I would add the Sims to that very small list. The games I see installed on customers machines are actually pretty rare. In fact if you want to cover 90% of PC users then just include a Solitaire benchmark.dr_psy - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
When are you people to stop that crappy "Power Consuption Delta" and come back to the raw values?This alone is reason enought to think in another webs to find reviews. Much more thes days when the power consuption values are so important. :(
hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
c'mon amd, update your damn chipsets. Having almost 6 year old chipsets (900 series is really nothing more than just a rebadge of 800 series) with no entery level option (like h81 with intel) is just sad for a platform that is suposibly aim at budget segment.Acreo Aeneas - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
You do realize this is a article about a AMD CPU right? AMD CPUs are not compatible with Intel chipsets. Wish people would read the article before coming up with random commentry.hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
who was talking about compatability with intel chipsets ?I'm just pointing out, that amd has no budget chipset option (yeah, i'm not gonna cout 760G, since that stuff is literally ancient).
hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
>Wish people would read the article before coming up with random commentry.Same could be said for you.
silverblue - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
That's not what (s)he said. The 970 isn't as budget as we'd like - it can be about twice the price of an H81 board - and they're still on 65nm fabrication which means slightly higher system power consumption. A refreshed chipset for FX may not make sense, but if they were to offer more USB 3.0 ports, PCIe 3.0 and - heaven forbid - a 32nm southbridge, and cutting the price down a little, an FX system would make a little more sense.hojnikb - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
Exactly my point. You can grab a cheap h81 mobo and the cheapest i5 for around the same money as 8320 and 970 mobo. And with intel you get superior platform (even the cheapest chipset offers native usb3 and pcie3), power consumption and better single thread performance.These amds make little sense outside of very specific workload, where many bulldozer cores come in handy.