Preview: AMD's FX-9590 Eight-Core At Up To 5.0GHz On Linux

Since last year AMD's had the FX-9590 as the top-end Vishera CPU that can top out at 5.0GHz with its Turbo Frequency, but initially this processor was only available to OEM system builds. Over time the OEM version of the FX-9590 became available to consumers while earlier this summer AMD launched a retail version of the FX-9590 that included the eight-core CPU with a closed-loop water cooling solution. Today we're reviewing this highest-end Vishera CPU to see how it compares to other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux.

The AMD FX-9590 is effectively just a faster version of the AMD FX-8350 that's been around since 2012. While the FX-8350 topped out at 4.2GHz Turbo with a 4.0GHz base clock, the FX-9590 has a base clock of 4.7GHz and can top out at 5.0GHz. But with this increased speed does come higher power use with the AMD FX-9590 having a 220 Watt TDP compared to the FX-8350's 125 Watt. The FX-9590 remains with the Socket AM3+, is eight cores via four Piledriver modules, has 8MB of L2 cache, is manufactured on a 32nm process, and shares the other common traits with the rest of the Vishera processors.

The water cooling unit that ships with the AMD FX-9590 is the Cooler Master Seidon 120. Given the 220 Watt TDP of this CPU, a water cooler is just about warranted and should ensure the FX-9590 can hit its 5.0GHz Turbo speeds more often. The Seidon 120 has a 120mm radiator and supports mounting up to two fans.

While there's been benchmark results of the AMD FX-9590 available to Windows users going back months, today is likely what are the first major results for this Eight-Core 5GHz Turbo CPU under Linux. With today's testing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS was utilized while upgrading to the Linux 3.17 development build for the best kernel support.