AMD Launches New FX CPUs, Cuts Prices On Existing Processors

Since last week I've had my hands on the FX-8370E and FX-8320E CPUs (along with the FX-9590) and have been testing them quite extensively under Linux. In this launch-day article are my initial Linux benchmark results while I have several more articles for the days ahead with more test results and looking at the performance in other areas and seeing how well these FX CPUs work for various Linux development tasks.

As with the other AMD FX CPUs, the FX-8370E and FX-8320E exhibited no major issues under Linux. Assuming you are running at least a semi-recent Linux distribution, there should be no issues with the CPUs themselves or the AMD 970/990 motherboard chipsets. The motherboard used for this AM3+ CPU testing was the ASRock 990FX Killer that AMD also sent over with this review sample shipment. The only minor Linux compatibility issue to note is that it seems the thermal driver in the Linux 3.17 kernel for the AMD CPUs doesn't work quite well as in some cases it was reporting temperatures around 1 Celsius, which isn't acheivable with this water cooling setup and obviously an error.

The processors tested for this article based upon availability included:

- Intel Pentium G3258
- Intel Core i3 4130
- Intel Core i5 4670
- Intel Core i7 4770K
- Intel Core i7 4790K
- Intel Core i7 4960X
- AMD Athlon 5150
- AMD A6-7400K
- AMD A10-7800
- AMD A10-7850K
- AMD FX-8350
- AMD FX-8370E
- AMD FX-8370
- AMD FX-9590