The AMD FX-8150 is the new range of “Bulldozer” processors from AMD.  These processors are meant to rival the Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors yet in reviews they seem to be letting the side down.  On first glance the 8 cores and clock speed of 3.6Ghz you would think this would walk all over the Sandy Bridges BUT due to the architecture being wholly different to the Intel equivalent it does not quite meet the mark and fails to perform anything like its rivals.

 

Getting technical, the FX-8150 gets let down by its lack of single-threaded performance as games like Arma 2 are still heavily dependent on a single thread to do most of the work rather than spreading it over the other cores. Even in some multi-threading applications the FX-8150 is not performing that well. The 8-core FX-8150 was only marginally faster than its predecessor the 6-core 3.3Ghz Phenom II x6 1100T. This does not bode well for the new range of Bulldozer processors. 

 

Compared to the Intel i5-2500K the FX-8150 is not as good. The quad core i5-2500K is better at stock speeds and overclocked. With the FX-8150 having the price tag of about £199 there is very little reason to choose this processor over the Intel chips for performance and price.

 

So all of you waiting for this release to stomp all over the Intel chips will have to wait as it looks like the FX chip is a bit of a fizzle.

 

This article was written by Alex our Special Tech. Alex admits that he is a Hardcore Gamer having played 35 hours of Skyrim over the weekend of its launch! If you are a gamer looking at building a high end gaming rig, give Alex a call for advice or to discuss having a custom gaming PC built to your specificiations.