AMD Phenom II X6 1100T versus FX-8120 Performance Guide

[mmstick]

Compare single core performance of FX and Phenom II at same speeds, FX still looses to Phenom II in all except memory bound tests.

You must be new to CPU architectures. Rule #1, clock frequency means nothing when comparing different architectures. Some architectures are incapable of high frequencies, but execute more in less time, other architectures are capable of incredibly high frequencies at the cost of executing slightly slower. The goal of CPU architecture design is not to do something as idiotic as getting the lowest IPC as that can ruin the potential of the design.

The goal is not to achieve the lowest IPC, but to achieve the best performance -- a balance between frequency and IPC -- in the same amount of real clock time. If you can execute 20 instructions in 5 cycles within 1 second, but at the cost of doing so, you could not run your processor at higher frequencies, why would that be better than a design executing 30 instructions in 10 cycles within 1 second?

In other words, you can't make the amateur mistake of comparing two entirely different architectures with one measurement alone. There's more to a CPU than IPC...

The rest of your junk is nonsense. This is Linux, and this is Phoronix -- this is not the place for your Windows-based website which is more than likely already running an Intel-biased Microsoft OS with Intel-biased benchmarking software.

[curaga]

The goal is not to achieve the lowest IPC, but to achieve the best performance -- a balance between frequency and IPC -- in the same amount of real clock time. If you can execute 20 instructions in 5 cycles within 1 second, but at the cost of doing so, you could not run your processor at higher frequencies, why would that be better than a design executing 30 instructions in 10 cycles within 1 second?

Power = freq * voltage^2, remember?

Frequency (and so IPC) clearly matters. Especially so as higher frequencies also need higher voltages to achieve. You can only discount freq if your power happens to be free, but that's a rare situation to be in.

It's also a historical fact that the losers are generally the high frequency/low ipc ones, while the winners are the opposite. Power tends to matter.

[torsionbar28]

AMD made a bad decision switching to bulldozer architecture, now they are deep in the ass. Bulldozer/Vishera/Steamroller all of them loosing to Core I* in multi-core performance. Also seems like Vishera (FX-8350) is their last 8-core CPU, as they stated there will be no Steamroller for AM3+ socket, they lost this fight. And soon they'll loose discrete video card market to Nvidia.

R.I.P. AMD.

Lmao, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard this... People said the same thing in 1993 when intel released the new Pentium Processor. It took AMD three full years to respond, with the AMD K5 in 1996.

If you recall, AMD had performance wins over intel with the K6-2 processor, the Athlon, the early Opterons. Remember, AMD invented x86-64, which effectively killed intel's IA64 aka Itanium.

Intel had performance wins over AMD with the Pentium, C2D, i7, and later Xeon models.

Also, absolute performance doesn't mean as much as the benchmark sites would have you believe. Consumers and businesses alike want value. Compare the price/performance of comparable AMD and intel chips, and the AMD chip always costs less. In the case of Opteron vs. Xeon, AMD comes in way way cheaper for the same level of performance.

All this tells us, is that there's healthy competition between the two, each one repeatedly leap-frogging the other over the years. Intel happens to have the absolute performance crown at this point in time. Don't forget that the consumer (that's you and I) are the winners in all of this.

[mmstick]

Power = freq * voltage^2, remember?

Frequency (and so IPC) clearly matters. Especially so as higher frequencies also need higher voltages to achieve. You can only discount freq if your power happens to be free, but that's a rare situation to be in.

It's also a historical fact that the losers are generally the high frequency/low ipc ones, while the winners are the opposite. Power tends to matter.

In other words, you've never heard of IBM processors, of which FX came about as a joint research between IBM and AMD who find higher frequencies to be a more worthwhile approach. It's blatantly obvious that running at a higher frequency requires a higher voltage, but that is entirely dependent on the architecture of the processor. You can't compare two entirely different architectures.

[leonmaxx]

Lmao, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard this... People said the same thing in 1993 when intel released the new Pentium Processor. It took AMD three full years to respond, with the AMD K5 in 1996.

If you recall, AMD had performance wins over intel with the K6-2 processor, the Athlon, the early Opterons. Remember, AMD invented x86-64, which effectively killed intel's IA64 aka Itanium.

Intel had performance wins over AMD with the Pentium, C2D, i7, and later Xeon models.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an AMD hater, I still remember K6-3 (Sharptooth), Athlon XP (Barton) and Athlon 64 (Clawhammer and Venice) - all of them was perfect CPUs from AMD.
Last 10 years I used mostly AMD hardware, now I have 2 PCs with AMD CPUs, one is FX-8350, and second is Phenom II X6, both PCs are with AMD video cards (and I'm using Ubuntu and Linux Mint, not M$ Windows like someone said). Both PCs are used for software development, and their value (e.g. price/performance) is highly acceptable.

absolute performance doesn't mean as much as the benchmark sites would have you believe.

3D Studio Max is not a benchmark at all, it is a real-world application. Also, I can confirm that Blender renders some scenes faster on Phenom II than on FX (that depends on scene complexity).

All this tells us, is that there's healthy competition between the two, each one repeatedly leap-frogging the other over the years. Intel happens to have the absolute performance crown at this point in time. Don't forget that the consumer (that's you and I) are the winners in all of this.

But, AMD decided not to release any new CPUs for AM3+ socket up to 2015-2016 (see AMD product roadmap), this could mean that Piledriver is last of 8-core workstation CPU from AMD. Me and my colleagues who need a fast workstation CPU, in near future will have no other choice but buying Intel CPUs.

Also, their Graphics Card drivers for Linux is mostly bugged, it's very annoying when in the middle of work process my cursor pointer gets corrupted and i have to store all my work and reboot a PC (relogin didn't helps), this bug annoys me for 4 months or so with Catalyst 13.9 betas, 14.1 beta, 14.2 beta. If they not fix bugs in drivers, I'll have no choice but switching to Nvidia graphics cards, as most of my colleagues already did.

Sorry for my bad english.