During
the second half of 2011, AMD has released two new architectures, one of which is
FM1 APU platform released in early July.
This platform is mainly integrated
with the built-in GPU in CPU by AMD for the first time, and the 3D performance
thereof is greatly improved than before.
Regrettably, FM1 is incompatible
with AM3+ pin under its own brand. I have already shared three articles about
the test of FM1 platform.
FM1 mentioned above belongs to the product
line of the medium-level or entry-level platform,
while Bulldozer is the new
platform advanced than medium-level of AMD, which is a hot term on the Internet.
By following the design of the previous platforms, Bulldozer’s architecture
adopts AM3+ pin.
CPU has three categories of 4-Cores FX-4100、6-Cores FX-6100
and 8-Cores FX-8120/FX-8150,
among which the two 8-Core categories are the
most eye-catching. After all, they are the first products shown in the Desktop
PC market.
After several delays, AMD Bulldozer is finally issued in the
mid of October and has been sold on the market successively.
There is a lot
of related information on the Internet and graphic magazines.
This time I
bought an AMD FX-8120 Processor with 8-Cores, 32nm process and TDP of
95W.
The core name is Bulldozer, the clock is 3.2GHz and the specification
from Turbo Core to 4.0GHz, L2 8MB and L3 8MB is supported.
The
upper left is FM1 A8-3850, lower right is AM3+ FX-8120. The front side
comparison between the CPUs of these two architectures
The
rear side comparison
The left is FM1, and the right is AM3+. It can be
obviously seen that the CPU pins of these two are incompatible.
Recently,
some cyber friends mention that I shared little information about the CPU.
Personally, I think CPU can be only described by specification and appearance
photography.
As for other CPU information, it can be told from the software
test below, which is the major part of this article.
Through the pictures of
practical test, the CPU performance can be fully presented.
Therefore, this
time I add the comparison of the two sides between the CPUs of these two AMD
pins, thereby hopefully sharing more details about the CPU-related information.
Regarding the chipset, AMD provides the combination with the three types
of 970, 990X and 990FX. 990FX was successively on shipment by major MB
manufacturers in August.
FX-series CPU was however released in the mid of
October, about over two months later. It is rare in the past PC market.
MB
uses BIOSTAR TA990FXE, which is in red package, and belongs to the EXTREME
EDITION version under its own brand.
Whole
view of BIOSTAR TA990FXE
AMD adopts the dual-bridge chipset design as before
instead of single chipset, combining the North bridge 990FX with the South
bridge SB950.
This combination is the most advanced chipset of AMD, and most
MB brands only release the ATX specification.
As for
the color, it still uses black PCB, and other slots such as PCI-E or DIMM use
red or white.
The advantage of white color is that it is conspicuous when
installed in the PC.
Compared with the other advanced products that are just
in black and red colors, it shows better texture.
Lower
left of the motherboard
3*PCI-E 2.0*16, ATI CrossFireX technology supported,
bandwidth *16+*16+*4
1*PCI-E*1
2*PCI
Atheros AR8151 network
chip
Realtek ALC892 audio chip, 8 sound channels HD Audio supported
Lower
right of the motherboard
5*red SATA, SB950 chip provided, SATA3
specification, and RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID10 supported
Blue is the front
USB 3.0 expansion slot, simple Power, Reset button, built-in Debug LED
Upper
right of the motherboard
4*DIMM DDR3, support
800/1066/1333/1600/1866/2000(OC), with the maximum capacity as 16GB.
DDR3
2000 can be only achieved by CPU OC external frequency. The next is 24-PIN power
input.
Upper
left of the motherboard
TA990FXE adopts 4+2 phase power supply. The upper
left is 8Pin power input.
It adopts the black AM3+ slot exclusively for
AMD’s advanced MB.
IO
1*PS2
keyboard
1*PS2 cursor
1*S/PDIF Out
1*FireWire IEEE
4*USB
2.0(Black/red)
2*USB 3.0(Blue)
1*eSATA2(Red)
1*RJ-45 Network
hole
6*Audio Sound effect hole
View of the heat dissipation module on the heat pipe
It is not bad in the
texture and the contact area, and the red aluminum sheet makes it look more
beautiful.
The
heat sink of North Bridge 990FX has large area for Aluminum extruded heat
dissipation.
Its shape is also designed for the consideration of preventing
the large VGA from being stuck
The
heat sink of South Bridge SB950 is a little thin. If it is designed as North
Bridge, they will be consistent in the view and texture.
Test
platform
CPU: AMD FX-8120 8-Core Processor
MB: BIOSTAR TA990FXE EXTREME
EDITION
DRAM: CORSAIR CMZ8GX3M2A1866C9R
VGA: msi N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr
II
HD: CORSAIR FORCEGT 120GB
POWER: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand
1200W
Cooler: CORSAIR Hydro Series H60
OS: Windows7 Ultimate 64bit
SP1
There
are more and more enclosed water cooled products in the market within the last
two years,
which have advantages of unnecessary replacement of coolant
booster, convenient installation and good performance.
Even the AMD’s most
advanced FX-8150 is integrated with solution of the water cooled heat sink.
Moreover, Intel has also started to buy water cooler heat sink since the
series of Sandy Bridge-E.
The heat sink used in this test is CORSAIR water
cooled module, with the module number as Hydro Series H60 that is featured by
silence.
Below is the external package of H60. The warranty period is as long
as five years, and the package size is much smaller than that of H80.
The
attached accessories
The bottom is the installation manual and introduction
of other product information.
The upper left side is a 12*12*2.5 cm fan,
with the maximum rotation speed as 1700 RPM, fan flow as 74.4 CFM, sound volume
as 30.2 dBA.
The upper right side is the buckles and installation screws for
each platform. H60 supports the platforms of AMD AM2/AM3. Intel LGA
775/1155/1156/1366.
The
left side is the entirely-black water cooled radiator, dimension of
120mm*152mm*27mm
H80 water cooled radiator is 38mm thick, while H60 is 27mm
thick, whose dimension is different from these two.
The right side is the
water block. There is a clear brand logo on the upper side. This picture is the
view installed with Intel Buckles.
It can
be seen from the rear side that the bottom of the water block is copper.
The
stacked fin sheets in the middle of the water cooled radiator provide larger
heat dissipation area.
CPU
default performance test
CPU 200.0 X 16 => 3200MHz
DDR3 1600 CL7
9-8-24 1T
Hyper PI 32M X 8 => 30m 21.240s
CPUMARK 99 =>
436
Nuclearus
Multi Core => 16066
Fritz Chess Benchmark => 20.75/9958
CrystalMark
2004R3 => 220281
CINEBENCH
R11.5
CPU => 5.04 pts
CPU(Single Core) => 0.95 pts
PCMark
Vantage => 14105
PCMark7
=> 3884
Windows
experience index - CPU 7.8
The
single-core performance of FX-8120 presented in CINEBENCH R11.5 is almost the
same as that of A8-3850 or Athlon II X4640,
and 10% lower than that of
Phenom II X6 1090T. So the FX series needs enhancement in single-core
performance.
Multi-task is still the major feature of FX-8120. The software
of CINEBENCH can get score of about 5.04 under 8-core at full speed.
However, by taking a close look, we can see that it only gets 5.31x for MP
Ratio. Compared with 3.89x of X4 640 and 5.22x of x6,
the best multi-task
performance can only reach the level of the last-generation X6.
It may be
correlated to the design of new architecture, or the performance will be
enhanced by Windows 8 as mentioned on the Internet.
As for the best Windows
experience index of above software, FX-8120 can get the high score of 7.8 under
default configuration.
DDR3 1600 CL7 9-8-24 1T
ADIA64 Memory Read -
13516 MB/s
Sandra Memory Bandwidth - 16554 MB/s
MaXXMEM Memory-Copy -
12839 MB/s
DDR3
performance is obviously improved in AM3+ CPU. Compared with 1090T under DDR3
1600, it is improved by over 30%.
It should be the best improvement among FX
series. It has gone through three generation of DDR~DDR3, from K8 DDR to the
latest 1090T DDR3.
Regarding the DRAM bandwidth, the maximum Read keeps
around 10000 MB/s. Over the past eight years, the AMD bandwidth has been
increased finally.
Although a small step in PC market, it is a big one for
AMD. It is hoped to catch up with the competitor’s platforms in DDR3 performance
in the future.
Temperature performance (Ambient temperature is 22
Celsius)
System standby - 13~27
CPU
at full speed - 22~33
LinX 0.6.4
In
comparison with the temperature by touching the water cooled radiator, the
burning temperature of FX-8120 under default frequency is lower than that of
1100T, so the temperature improvement is great.
It can be seen from the
shared test of 32nm A8-3850 that the CPU temperature is always low according to
much software.
It remains the same after I use A75 of more than three
brands. However, the temperature is not so low when I touch the heat sink, which
is about 50 Celsius according to my analysis.
The abnormal CPU temperature
is also shown on FX-8120. As mentioned by some media abroad, it might be caused
by the inaccurate temperature information provided by FX CPU to MB.
The above
temperature data detected by various software is just for reference, but without
representing the actual temperature of FX-8120 capably.
Power consumption
test
System standby - 74W
CPU
at full speed - 157W
LinX 0.6.4
The
power consumption of FX-8120 obtains rather good performance under default
configuration.
The power consumption difference between standby and full
speed is 83W.
The integration of 32nm process is greatly helpful to the CPU
of AMD’s new-era FM1 or AM3+ architecture.
Below will share the
overclocking of FX-8120
BIOSTAR has integrated new UEFI graphic interfaces
in 990FX BIOS.
Some power-saving functionality in the CPU information page
can make some further adjustment.
O.N.E
calibration page
Voltage
page
CPU Vcore +0.050~1.450V
CPU-NB Over Voltage +0.050~0.200V
Memory
Over Voltage -0.250~+0.490V
NB Over Voltage +0.010~0.490V
CPU HT Over
Voltage +0.010~0.300V
SB Over Voltage +0.010~0.300V
NB HT Over Voltage
+0.010~0.300V
CPU
frequency multiplication can be adjusted here too. To increase the external
frequency, it needs to lower NB FID first.
If you want to reduce CPU voltage,
you can also start from the option of Core VID
As
for the DRAM frequency and parameter settings, generally, smaller the values
are, higher the performance is.
Different from the previous platforms,
FX-8120 supports DDR3 1866 for the first time.
In the past, the maximum CPU
of the version inferior to 1100T can be only adjusted as 1600.
Below it is
set as DDR3 1866 CL8 10-9-27 1T
PC
Health Status
CPU temperature detection data is higher than some software in
OS, so this comparison is much closer to the actual temperature performance.
Above
are the set values by windwithme to overclock FX-8120 to 4.7GHz and integrate
with DDR3 1866.
The overclocking settings are easier than that of
frequency-unlocked FX CPU. It just needs to adjust CPU frequency multiplication,
and then adjust the CPU voltage to the acceptable value.
In comparison, the
overclocking of DDR3 is also in the similar way, which requires adjusting DDR3
1600/1866 first, and then setting parameters or increasing DDR3 voltage.
If
the operation voltage can be stabilized after overclocking CPU/DDR3, it means
that the overclocking is successful.
Overclcoking performance test
CPU 200.0 X 23.5 => Voltage of 4700MHz at full speed is 1.452V
DDR3
1866.6 CL8 10-9-24 1T
Hyper PI 32M X 8 => 22m 29.028s
CPUMARK 99
=> 520
Nuclearus
Multi Core => 23265
Fritz Chess Benchmark => 30.51/14643
CrystalMark
2004R3 => 282679
CINEBENCH
R11.5
CPU => 7.62 pts
CPU(Single Core) => 1.15 pts
PCMark
Vantage => 16970
PCMark7
=> 4432
Windows
experience index - CPU 7.8
After
overclcoking FX-8120 to 4.7GHz, the performance of CINEBENCH is increased by
about 20% in single core, and over 50% in 8-core at full speed.
Besides, MP
Ratio is also increased to 6.63x, which should be an important factor to cause
the significant improvement of the multi-core performance.
The performance
of other software in the entire platform is significantly improved as well.
It seems that the performance of FX-8120 after overclocking is comparatively
outstanding.
However, the Windows experience index is still 7.8 scores. The
simple test software built in Windows7 is necessarily enhanced in the accuracy
aspect.
DDR3 1866.6 CL8 10-9-24 1T
ADIA64 Memory Read - 14194
MB/s
Sandra Memory Bandwidth - 18627 MB/s
MaXXMEM Memory-Copy -
13985MB/s
FM1
APU released by AMD in July, if without overclocking, can be maximized to DDR3
1866.
The architecture of AM3+ Bulldozer this time has the same
specification. It is unlike the previous platforms that can only support DDR3
1600 at most.
The improvement in frequency is also the feature of this new
platform, and the bandwidth is slightly increased after it is adjusted to DDR3
1866.
Power consumption test
System standby - 79W
CPU
at full speed - 401W
CPU test items in CINEBENCH R11.5 running
For
the power consumption duing system standby, it just increases 5W once
overclocking.
It may be resulted from enabling C&Q power-saving
technology. This part is fairly good.
However, the power consumption amount
after overclocking increases a lot.
When I tried 4.3GHz by using LinX
burning, the power consumption reached around 380W.
It couldn’t conduct
burning by using LinX under 4.7GHz. When I tested the 8-core capabilities by
CINEBENCH R11.5, it still got the data of 401W.
The power consumption of
FX-8120 after overclocking is quite high, which is one of the factors in need of
improvement in the future.
I don’t share more about the temperature test
after overclocking.
The first reason is that LinX can be only running under
4.3~4.5GHz.
After replacing it with Thermaltake advanced air cooler or
CORSAIR H80 to enhance the heat dissipation capabilities, the overclocking
stability couldn’t be improved as well.
Another reason is that displayed
temperature is only around 42~46 Celsius, which should not be the actual
temperature.
When I disassembled the tower air cooler after burning at
4.3GHz, the heat dissipated from the heat sink shocked me a lot.
3D
test
msi N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II
3DMark Vantage CPU SCORE =>
58318
FINAL
FANTASY XIV
1920 X 1080 => 4021
StreetFighter
IV Benchmark
1920 X 1080 => 270.63 FPS
Above
is the performance of three kinds of 3D software under 4.7GHz, which is also
affected by the CPU performance.
Regarding the 3D scores, it is 10% less
than that of 2500K OC 5GHz. It needs to be further improved in the future AMD
architecture.
990FX provides the bandwidth of ATI CrossFireX X16+X16, which
can get better performance than the dual-VGA of the same
specification.
External frequency of FX-8120 also gets good performance.
If you want to increase the DDR3 performance more, the most direct way is to
increase the CPU external frequency.
In this way, it can probably reach the
level of DDR3 2000~2200.
CPU 262 X 18 => 4716MHz
DDR3 2096 CL10
11-10-27 1T
ADIA64 Memory Read - 14914 MB/s
Sandra Memory Bandwidth -
19369MB/s
MaXXMEM Memory-Copy - 15013MB/s
The
external frequency of FX-8120 can be stable around 255MHz. CPU external
frequency within the overclocking range also performs well.
After increasing
DDR3, it can almost reach 15000 MB/s in AIDA64 Memory Read.
Compared with
the previous AMD platforms, the bandwidth performance when overclocking is
increased by about 40~50%, which is also one of the greatest feature for this
new platfo
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