Tests

Our test method is briefly described here. The scores on diagrams are relative to that of our reference testbed that always scores 100 points. As of 2011, it's based on the AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU, 8GB of RAM and Palit's NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1280MB. Detailed (absolute) results are traditionally provided in this summary.

3D Modeling

These few-threading benchmarks prefer Intel processors, so there is no competition between the big rivals. The most interesting fact here is the noticeable gap between FX-8350 and the other three AMD CPUs. The preceeding FX-8150 slightly outperforms A10-5800K thanks to the L3 cache, but FX-8350 has both the L3 cache and improved architecture.

Final 3D Rendering

Having only four vector units, Bulldozer processors deal poorly with such a load. They yield to both Intel Core i5 and Phenom II X6. In turn, the Piledriver-based FX-8350 beats them all, as impressively as it did in the previous group of tests. While this is not enough to compete with the 8-thread Core i7 CPUs of the second and third generations, it does allow the novelty to catch up with Core i5-3450. Good progress!

Data Compression/Decompression

Note: despite having more cores and L3 cache, Phenom II X6 1100T outperforms A10-5800K only by 5%, so developing a new microarchitecture instead of just moving to a finer process technology is truly justified. As for our testbeds, in this group of tests, FX-8150 has used to catch up with the second-generation Core i5s and some of the first-generation Core i7s, and the faster FX-8350 beats all Core i5 processors of the third generation and climbs close to the 2nd-gen Core i7 CPU.

Audio Encoding

Even FX-8150 beats Core i5s, not to mention FX-8350 which perform on a par with Core i7. Here, the extra 10% thread performance plus extra 10% clock rate provide the overall 20% performance boost to the hero of this review.

Compiling

This cache-demanding test group shows similar results though the boost is not significant, because L3 cache specifications of the novelty remain the same. However, the extra 15% performance let FX-8350 leave Phenom II X6 1100T far behind and almost catch up with the latest-generation Core i7.

Mathematical and Engineering Computations

In this mostly few-threading group of tests Intel processors are traditionally out of reach. Again, FX-8350 is the first FX processor to outperform Phenom II X6 1100T.

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