General Use Performance

We'll start out our tests with the 7-zip benchmark, a CPU bound multithreaded integer workload that looks at 7-zip compression/decompression algorithms where the IO subsystem is removed from the equation:

7-zip Benchmark

7-zip is almost the perfect scenario for AMD's Vishera: a heavily threaded integer benchmark. Here the FX-8350 is able to outperform the Core i7 3770K. In fact, all of the Vishera parts are able to outperform their price competitive Ivy Bridge alternatives. The old Core i7 920 does pretty well here thanks to its 8-thread architecture.

Next up is Mozilla's Kraken JavaScript benchmark. This test includes some forward looking js code designed to showcase performance of future rich web applications on today's software and hardware. We run the test under IE10:

Windows 8 - Mozilla Kraken Javascript Benchmark

If the 7-zip benchmark is the best case scenario for AMD, Mozilla's Kraken test is among the worst. Largely dominated by single threaded performance, the FX-8350 is significantly slower than a Core i3 3220. Only Intel's old Core i7 920 is slower here, and that's a chip that debuted in 2008.

Although not the best indication of overall system performance, the SYSMark 2012 suite does give us a good idea of lighter workloads than we're used to testing.

SYSMark 2012 - Overall

Overall performance according to SYSMark 2012 is within striking distance of Ivy Bridge, at least for the FX-8350. AMD seems to have equalled the performance of last year's 2500K, and is able to deliver almost 90% of the performance of the 3750K. It's not a win by any means, but AMD is inching closer.

SYSMark 2012 - Office Productivity

SYSMark 2012 - Media Creation

SYSMark 2012 - Web Development

SYSMark 2012 - Data/Financial Analysis

SYSMark 2012 - 3D Modeling

SYSMark 2012 - System Management

Par2 File Recovery Performance

Par2 is an application used for reconstructing downloaded archives. It can generate parity data from a given archive and later use it to recover the archive

Chuchusoft took the source code of par2cmdline 0.4 and parallelized it using Intel’s Threading Building Blocks 2.1. The result is a version of par2cmdline that can spawn multiple threads to repair par2 archives. For this test we took a 708MB archive, corrupted nearly 60MB of it, and used the multithreaded par2cmdline to recover it. The scores reported are the repair and recover time in seconds.

Par2 - Multi-Threaded par2cmdline 0.4

Crank up the threads and once again you see Vishera do quite well. The FX-8350 outpaces the Core i5 3570, and the FX-4300 falls only slightly behind the Core i3 3220.

Excel Math Performance

Microsoft Excel 2007 SP1 - Monte Carlo Simulation

Introduction Video Transcoding & Visual Studio 2012 Performance
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  • CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

    LOL - seems like... hahahahhahahah in some imaginary future in a far off land, if and when and only if amd does xxxx and yyyyyy and blah blah blah blah,.... blew it.
  • g101 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link

    More extreme ignorance from the idiot CeriseCogburn. Little boys who only game should seriously consider not commenting on things they aren't capable of comprehending.

    Stupid little bitchboy CeriseCogburn...What a waste of oxygen.
  • DDR4 - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - link

    nice to see AMD make better procs and lower their prices
  • andrewkoch - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link

    If you live in an area that requires A/C most of the year like me, the true cost of owning a FX8350 processor is about an additional $100 year vs. owing a 3570k.
    Fx8350 +15 watts idle +95 watts load vs. i5 3570k
    50 hours week light cpu usage = 75W
    10 hours week heavy cpu usage = 760w
    Combined usage = 1025w @$0.11 Kw/h = $1.12
    A/C usage 75%-80% @$0.11 Kw/h = $.84
    Extra electrical cost $2/week
    Extra electrical cost $100/yearly or $300/3 years

    Maybe my math is wrong, but if you use A/C most of the year and pay for electricity an AMD cpu is a waste of money. Then again some people still use incandescent light bulbs instead of compact fluorescent lamps or LED bulbs.
  • andrewkoch - Saturday, November 10, 2012 - link

    LoL my math was wrong in the above post.
    Fx8350 +15 watts idle +95 watts load vs. i5 3570k

    68 hours week light cpu usage = 1kW
    100 hours week heavy cpu usage = 9.5w
    Combined weekly usage = 10.5kw @$0.11 Kw/h = $01.15
    Average A/C usage 80%*$1.15 @$0.11 Kw/h = $.0.92
    Extra electrical cost $2/week vs. owing a 3570k
    Extra electrical cost $100/yearly or $300/3 years vs. owing a 3570k
    In this usage scenario the computer is heavily used for tasks like folding, gaming or video editing
  • criter - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - link

    121117
    Intel is a semiconductor company first; and a microprocessor company second ($13.5B revenue [#3.8B quarter])
    used to make a living making memory chips (dram) until they became commoditized by Japanese rivals in the 1980s and margins plunged, now volume produced microprocessors happen to be the most profitable;
    makes more useable chips per $5B-300mm & $7B-450mm/+40to120% extra chips wafer fabs, (90% yield range vs 60 to 80% rivals), moving to 22nm geometries, 14nm by 4q13;
    Chips take about 3 months to make and they are put through more than 300 separate processes
    intel atom vs brit arm (less pwr & customizable, 98% of cellphones since 2005 have had arms in them) for touch panel (w8) mobile/cell phone/tablet mkt
    i3 55W ceiling...

    amd Piledriver (x86 architecture) retail Oct 2012, 4c, 8c, L2&3 16MB, am3+, ddr3, dx11, 32nm; 1st gen Zambezi; (pdriver performs +15% than bulldozer;)
    FX4300 8MB/95w, 3.8GHz, $131, 4c
    FX6300 14MB/95w, 3.5GHz, $176, 6c
    fx8320 16MB/125w, 3.5GHz, $242, 8c
    fx8350 16MB/125w, 4GHz, $253, 8c
    K10 4q07 (phenom x4/IIx3/IIx4, gen3 Opteron), K8 2q03 (Athlon 64/64x2, Sempron 64), k7 3q99 (Athlon/xp, Duron, Sempron)
    ?Trinity apu (AcceleratedProcessingUnit, pdriver) architecture (2gen x86 cores) Oct 1, integrated gpu, 'fusion' fm2 formfactor (previous llano use fm1 socket), dx11 (shader5), (radion A4-7480 to A10-7660 hd gpu)

    Merom mobile arch (1q06, 667-800MT/s, 35W, bga479, socketM&P; updated 65nm [fab] Yonah core P6[pentium pro '95]) marked Intel’s acknowledging that the Pentium 4 (netburst arch) was not a viable long term solution because power efficiency is crucial to success;
    65nm Conroe desktop (core2 quad, 800 MT/s, 65W, lga775); Woodcrest (lga771) 1333 scaled down to 1066MT/s workstation (40W@1.6-1.86GHz, 80W 3GHz), server(xeon socket604&lga771);
    differing socket(M,P,T,fcbga), bus speed and pwr consumption; the identical Core microarchitecture was designed by Israel's Intel Israel (IDC) team;
    stepping represent incremental improvements but also different sets of features like cache size and low power modes;
    Nehalem 45nm (16pipeline), Westmere 32nm; Sandy bridge 32nm, ivy bridg 22nm; Haswell 22nm, Broadwell 14nm; Skylake 14nm, Skymont 10nm;
    sandy bridge 32nm integrated x86 microprocessor as SoC (cpu/gpu+last lvl cache+sys I/O) vs amd bulldozer
    intel haswell dual-threaded, out-of-order cpu arch 22nm FinFET, (high end tablets, low pwr)
    theoretical peak performance for Haswell is over double that of Sandy Bridge, twice the FLOP/s, cache bandwidth doubled, vs '13 amd Steamroller core & w8;
  • g101 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link

    What is this pile of copy/pasted shit?
  • Principle - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link

    Why is it that every review I see, no one uses the RAM that the CPU memory controller is rated for? Or in overclocking, did you see what a RAM overclock added?

    Just because your Intel chip may not perform any better with 1333, 1600, or 1866, doesnt mean you dont run your AMD chip with the 1866 its rated for. I see this all over the review sites. You dont have to use the same RAM in both systems for a comparison of CPU performance. RAM choice is designed into the CPU, and has an affect.
  • ThaSpacePope - Monday, December 3, 2012 - link

    Nice job AMD. I guess some of these benchmarks are skewed because windows 8 is superior to windows 7 because it uses the modules better, but still.. the $166 8350 outperforms in some cases or comes close to the performance of a $200 i5-3570k.

    This is great news for AMD. Keep up the good work!
  • jreyes2254 - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link

    I find it funny all the Intel lovers are hating on so called AMD "fanboys."

    Isnt defending Intel and hating on AMD in turn make you all Intel "Fanboys."?

    ...Intel has not served me well I havent used one since my ol P4... I gladly claim the title of AMD "Fanboy.".

    I have this CPU, Its pretty Epic.

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