As predicted the FX-4100 OC's very well

Very nice. That would sink the i3's at that price.

It's still way more powerful than the average user/gamer needs. You don't need anything faster unless you run 2-3 video cards and almost no games use more than 4 cores.

Alright! That speed boost takes it from being an i3 competitor to A8 lvl of prowess.
Yes its a decent deal for $120 but for $20 more I'd take the A8 but only if I had too since its a dead end socket already. For strictly light duty and gaming I could see this being viable.

A8 ?

What is the ratio? Does 1 percent increase equals a 1 percent performance increase?

I would definitely take this over the A8. 4.6ghz, Plus AM3+ gives you pile driver compatability. Plus, who knows, you may be able to unlock some extra cores. For $109 and $60 mobo's? Shoot.

Makes me wish I had waited and not gotten an i3.

Gnomio, if you read the article, you know as much as we do.

cinebench

FX-4100 stock 2.97
FX-4100 OC 3.78
P-II 980 stock 4.40

how the !@#$ can any bulldozer make people happy? I can purchase an athlon II x4 for less money and get the same results.

theres a article? Just yesterday I was fighting with a guy over at anandtech over a cheap Amd cpu vs the I3 for gaming. I got power draw reply after reply.

Unlock some cores? You mean unlock some modules and threads?

Who cares if the FX overclocks to 4.6Ghz, it's slower than Phenom II and even Athlon II clock for clock. If it's anything like the FX 8150 it's power consumption goes up dramatically as well. The processor should cost no more than $100.

And thread vs thread?

Interesting review. For $210USD you can get an FX-410 and an
ASRock 870 Extreme3 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard for $90. About the same price as an I5 2500K.
It certainly doesn't beat a 2500K or an AMD Phenom IIX6 1100T but it comes pretty close.

Gnomio...go look at the link and you'll see how it does thread for thread.

Yeah, what is the OC power consumption like?

Except it's not slower - unless you use old code paths and ISAs. Look at the SSE4.1 results. OpenCL results look even better. FMAC is a wrap.

Not close to the 2500K.......It's about on par with the X4 965

People it's a value CPU priced at $120.

great so for anyone who enjoys running synthetic benchmarks I'm sure the they will enjoy the FX-4 bulldozer. for anyone who actually wants a better performance in gaming or actual software like video encoding, the CPU is a joke and they may as well stay with their Phenom II x4 for better performance as proven in those benchmarks in every game and video encoding.

I can get the phenom II x4 840 for $100 (or $60 at microcenter) and get the exact same performance. the intel i3-2300 is the exact same price and wipes the floor with the FX-4. how is that value?

http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?...

Actually you can't get the same performance... which is why people should buy what makes them happy.

As I predicted several weeks ago the FX-4100 is likely to be the FX OC King. They reached 4.6 GHz. with the default voltage and OEM HSF. I'm waiting to see how they do with better cooling and a bump in voltage.  

hey you are correct, the phenom II x4 840 is better proving what crap the FX-4 really is and your BS argument. let's look at facts rather then one's opinion

fact - cinebench 11.5 benchmark, does the FX beat the gimped phenom II x4? (remember it has no L3 cache, basically an athlon II) nope, it loses. well what about when we OC the FX? well no, it still loses to the stock phenom II
FX - 4100 2.97

phenom II 840 3.61


how about gaming, unfortunately there are no benchmarks using both CPUs in the same test bed but we do know thee facts.
1. The A8 gives equal performance to an athlon II and the FX and A8 tie in just about every gaming benchmark linked above.
2. since the phenom II x4 is basically an athlon II x4 and since the FX-4 gives similar performance; both CPUs would tie and hold back" top gaming cards in gaming benchmarks.
3. the phenom II x4 840 can cost up to $50 less then the FX-4 (see link above). So if I have a budget of $200 for CPU=GPU and $110 goes to the FX-4, that leaves me with $90 out the door for the GPU (an AMD 6670 off newegg). But if I only spend $60 on my CPU that gives me equal performance as the FX-4, then I can spend $140 out the door on my GPU (an AMD 6790). Last I checked, most gamers would take that GPU upgrade unless of course you like running synthetic benchmarks on your gaming PC until the cows come home.

thanks dirtyferret. your right on the money. fact is, it doesnt matter how well a FX processor overclocks, unless your trying to break an OC record. For real world computing, its a poor performer, even overclocked, and there are more sane options available.

That was a question for the ninja who talked about core performance.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/crysis-2-dx11-vga-and-cpu...

People and their cpu gaming performances. Go buy a bigger resolution monitor for pete sake

this processor is booty. it's a dual core.

im so happy i stayed with my 955be. 3.7ghz plus a 6950 2gb will last me a long time.

Hmmm.....

I would choose the A8-3850 vs. the FX-4100. Overall, the A8-3850 performs better like in video encoding which is something that I do. Gaming performance is marginally slower than the FX-4100, but gaming is not the only thing I do with a PC.

At least it's cheaper than the Core i3-2120 and it is competitive against it as well. Yay!!!! Who would have thought that a quad core can equal or beat a dual core?

They are called cores. Period.

Oh Cinebench, nice how you cherrypick one bench. Of course the highest clocked quad is going to score higher, duh.

What you fail to understand, is these cpu's are overkill for 95% of users, including gamers who only run a single video card.

If these cpus are overkill for most people, they can get an i3 or pentium that will use less power.

bulldozer isnt nearly as bad as it was marketed. marketing it as a modern "fx" was a mistake from the beginning. honestly i dont know what the boys over at amd were thinking. no wonder theyre letting their marketing department go.

bulldozer is NOT an 8 core cpu and never should have been marketed as such. yes, it technically has 8 cores but this cpu is unlike anything before. its sharing resources between 2 cores, and calling it a module. i practical terms, a "8 core" is a 4 core. a 4 core is a 2 core. had they just marketed it for what it is, a core with an extra physical core, to help compete with hyperthreading. really, they "doubled" their cores while only adding 10-20 percent to the die space. its not a magic trick. you dont get 100 percent more for 20 percent

amd has a vision. the vision is true multithreading. able to work on any amount of cores. crossfire set ups that work, with 100 percent gain. just being able to dump more cpu cores and gpu cores into a computer and have the benefit be there 100 percent. in all actuality, we all want this. software always using as many cores as possible with maximum efficiency. the limits and constraints of building a modern super computer desktop would become practical. if this were to happen, amd would not only compete with intel, but be something to be feared. this is the vision. bulldozer is a step in that direction.

all i can say is its a vision i share, but dont go discontinuing that phenom line anytime soon. single/dual/tri threaded apps are very *now*

time to prove geekdisapproved takes the short bus to school with facts
1. i did not not bring up cinibench, it was from the OP if you clearly read the very first post where the following line is stated
"OC results in a 27% increase in performance in Cinebench R 11.5.". So no benchmark was ever cherry picked by me.

2. Let's look at your line quoted above "Of course the highest clocked quad is going to score higher, duh." Oh really?!, let's look at the facts once more.

Quad Core CPU - Speed - Cinebench score
FX - 4100 - 3.6ghz (3.8 turbo) - 2.97
FX - 4100 OC - 4.6ghz - 3.78
Phenom II - 3.7ghz - 4.40

So it looks like the exact opposite happened from your "duh" statement. The CPU with the lowest speed actually beat the other CPU even with it OC by a full 1GHZ. Even at stock the FX-4100 will git 3.8ghz and last I checked, 3.8 is bigger then 3.7.

So that gets you following reward, wear it with pride!

No its 4 modules 8 threads. Thats not cores. lets call the 2600k a 8 core machine as well then we pit it up against the I7-980x in heavily cpu computed tasks that uses all the cores and see who comes out on top.

Doesn't matter if they overclock, they still won't match a 2500k, maybe you should watercool one since they run so hot.