AMD Bulldozer Review: FX-8150 Gets Tested

Benchmark Results: PCMark 7

I’m starting off with the synthetic results because I like to see how hardware measures up in tightly-controlled metrics. PCMark 7 doesn’t necessarily isolate specific capabilities of any given platform because it’s composed of Windows 7-based components.

The suite does utilize as many cores as you can throw at it, though (despite reports to the contrary). With that said, the FX-8150 is only very narrowly able to outpace the Phenom II X4 980—a quad-core 3.7 GHz processor. Both the Core i5-2500K and i7-2600K are notably faster in PCMark 7’s Overall Suite score.

FX’s worst finish is in the Entertainment suite, which is heavy on graphics, video playback/transcoding, and storage. Finishing behind AMD’s previous flagship quad- and hexa-core models doesn’t bode well. Fortunately, the rest of the results show Zambezi at least matching those older chips.

There are at least a couple of tests, however, where the Zambezi-based FX CPU loses out to the once-popular Core i7-920 running at its default 2.66 GHz. And the $245 processor falls behind the $220 Core i5-2500K and $315 Core i7-2600K in every discipline.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • btto
    yeah finaly, now i'll read it
    Reply
  • ghnader hsmithot
    nOT Bad AMd!
    Reply
  • jdwii
    Been so long and i'm kinda sad.
    Reply
  • compton
    Not many surprises but I've been waiting for a long, long time for this. I hope this is just the first step to a more competitive AMD.
    Reply
  • ghnader hsmithot
    At least its almost as good as Nehalem.
    Reply
  • gamerk316
    Dissapointing. Predicted it ages ago though. PII X6 is a better value.
    Reply
  • As I expected - failure.
    Reply
  • AbdullahG
    I see the guys from the BD Rumors are here. As many others are, I'm disappointed.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    for the gaming community this is a FLOP.
    Reply
  • phump
    FX-4100 looks like a good alternative to the 955BE. Same price, higher clock, and lower power profile.
    Reply