Hey, I was looking into building a new PC and the FX-8320 caught my eye.
It's an unlocked 8 core processor and it's only £100. Why is it this cheap?
Can anyone recommend anything better within the same budget? I do a lot of work with virtual machines and compiling code.
Thanks :-)
The 8320 is a VERY good chip and is essentially the same as the 8350 and works very well with virtualization.
You would be hard press ed to find a better value except for the 8350 itself. You may have found one on sale. it is going right now for about $140 here in the states. For the price it is difficult to do better. Intels E3-1230 V3 Xeon has better performance, but is more expensive. The closest thing I think is like an I5-4690K. But IMO the Price vs performance is not as good as the FX.
Is the only difference between the 8320 and 8350 the stock clock speed?
well higher clock speed and higher turbo clock speed But the TDP on the 8320 is a good bit lower
Well yes and no. It comes from the same manufacturing wafer but the 8350 is overall a better chip and a better overclocker. Overall the 8320 is great, at the very least, you'll be able to overclock it to the 4.0-4.2ghz if you want to.
The price isn't that much different so I'll go with the 8350.
Thanks for your help :-)
"I do a lot of work with virtual machines and compiling code."
May want to look into X99 with 5820k if you want something that is a major improvement over the FX 8350 if you're primary purpose is workstation appliances.
For the record my 4.8GHZ FX 8350 does wonders. If you're not doing 4k editing and rendering 24/7 it will be the perfect CPU.
Actually the 8350 handles VMs incredibly well and at a very good price point.
I am a bit curious about these, for instance are the E parts achieving lower power usage because they are cherrypicked, or just becuase they are downclocked, and are they limited in powerdraw, because they seem to be not performing so well, like they arent hitting their boost frequencies. And is an 8370E better binned than 8320e which is much cheaper (might be able to tell from benchmarks, because they supposedly have the same power draw).
And I wonder if their are any changes to the E parts which allow them to achieve these voltages. Just think it is a shame that they didn't do a steamroller refresh, that would have been nice, even if it was on the 32nm. 5Ghz steamroller would have been awesome. And the 8320E looks like it might be a great winner, especially when combined with one of the less expensive 990fx boards.
+1
I second this, I have the 8350 and VMs run great and fast.
X99 platform currently is extremely expensive. I've compiled code and worked with VMs on the 8350, it does a pretty good job, just not as fast as a X99.
Aah, I'm not a billionaire so I can't afford X99.
I don't do any editing or rendering so I think the 8350 will be fine.
8370 and 8370e are basically the same chips just the latter has a lower clock and TDP
Yes but how, is it because they are cherry picked, is it because they are running slower, is it both. If they are cherry picked or something then the 8320e could be the chip to get.
Yeah unless you are doing serious content creation you don't need X99. That being said the 8350/20 handles editing and rendering quite well. Pretty much the same as a 4790k.
FX8350 is one of the cheapest solutions to run vm´s. realy. pair it with Asus 990FX board, and you have basicly all the feutures you need for virtualization, like IOMMU support.
Haswell-e will not be much better then a FX8350 in VM, only the 5960X will. But then you need to be sure that the X99 board you are looking for, supports the full virtualization feutures, like VT-d. (will probably be the case) With "most" X99 boards.
But with those gaming related X99 boards like MSi and Gigabyte have, its allways a question...
+1
Also works great on the FX970 chipset, which also has all the functions, but the 8320/8530/upwards need a strong power supply and a motherboard with a beefy CPU power delivery assembly. It's something AMD has learned by putting lots of cores in non-server applications early on, and it makes a lot of sense, but Intel for instance is avoiding the problem in another way: if a CPU with more cores ramps up, it will cause a massively bigger sudden current draw than when a CPU with less cores ramps up, and this causes a voltage droop that has to be compensated by adding a lot of extra energy, or the CPU will stall. AMD doesn't really solve this themselves, they leave it up to the mobo manufacturers to solve, whereas Intel tries to solve this problem themselves (which is why it takes so long) by moving last-line-VRM assemblies onto the chips, reducing the power requirements, and adding code that prevents all cores from ramping up at the same time. Up to a 95W TDP AMD CPU, there is no problem with most motherboards, but for +6-core 100+ W TDP AMD CPU's, you basically need an "overclocking" mobo, and if you're going to overclock the damn' thing on top of that, you'd better get a mobo designed for a TDP of 200+W. At maximum overclock, an FX-8350 exhausts about 200 W of heat. If you do that on a basic mobo, there's all sorts of shit happening. That's what's so good about the 8370E, it's only a 95 W TDP part, and the only difference is that it ramps up slower and has a lower cruising speed.
The difference between FX8320 and FX8350 is the result of a binning process. The chips are identical, but the 8350's have tested to work with lower core voltage at higher frequencies. The 9590 is on the other side of that binning process, these are the chips that have tested the best, so they overclock the best. The Intel CPU range is just as much the result of a binning process, with the connotation that the smaller the lithography is, the higher the variance becomes, so there are far more extreme variances even within the same SKU on Intel CPU's. As AMD moves on to a smaller litho for their next generation of CPU's, they will undoubtedly encounter the same problem, but for now, all you need to get the most out of an AMD FX CPU, is to throw enough electrical energy at it.
The big difference between AMD and Intel is that according to a 2009 out-of-court settlement between the two of them, AMD cannot manufacture whole systems, whereas Intel can. This has lead to an entirely different approach on how AMD and Intel handle hardware partnerships. Intel tries to ensure that their products work on everything under the sun, and takes care of as much functional assemblies as they can themselves, either in the CPU or in their chipsets. This leaves mobo manufacturers with the opportunity to earn a couple of marketing bucks extra by blocking features that are not popular with closed source software dependent market participants, and from adding features by replacing core functionality with their own proprietary solutions. AMD on the other hand, requires from mobo manufacturers that all of the functionality the CPU and chipset provide, are implemented, supported, and working, but they leave a lot of flexibility to hardware partners in the implementation of those features. That is why AMD mobos often have quite a lot of features for the price, and often feature technologies like faster USB controllers, faster LAN controllers, etc... because that's where mobo manufacturers can make a difference in their product as opposed to others. The downside of the AMD approach, is that AMD doesn't control specific things like power delivery in the same way as Intel does, which leaves the overclocking consumers to the mercy of the designs by the mobo manufacturers. Whereas a mobo manufacturer can slap just about any old CPU power delivery assembly on any Intel board as long as it meets the basic spec, and Intel irons out the imperfections itself, these manufacturers have to really think about what customers might do with AMD chips in order to provide the correct power delivery assembly. That said, when a board is certified for an FX8350, it is certified for that chip at stock clock speed, not for overclocking. The same goes for an FX8320. If you want to overclock, you have to look for a board that "specializes" in overclocking, and in the case of FX 8 cores, that means you have to look for boards that are used by extreme overclockers to be on the safe side, because ever since the AMD Phenom II, those AMD CPU's will hit 200+W TDP in the blink of an eye once you start ramping up that multiplier, and you don't want warped mobos with severed traces nor black burn marks on your board lol.
As to VM's, it all depends on what platform your going to be virtualizing. With Haswell, Intel has introduced some very sexy looking microcode that should really help with virtualization. Problem is, sofar down the line, this has turned out to bring nothing at all. It's just not implemented well, and it doesn't work. With Haswell-E/X99, this has been changed, and the first steps towards optimisation for virtualization have been made on Intel, but then X99 is a terrible platform to virtualize on, because it's a locked down platform without scalability, that's not certified for 24/7 full load operation, and that doesn't support ECC, so it's one standalone single-CPU hobbyist machine showing off basically, which is kinda ridiculous in this day and age, where tax administrations just don't allow amortisations of such investments over 1-2 years any more, so platforms have to be scalable so they can be written off over 4-5 years or even more. AMD CPU's have been optimised for virtualization for years, but they have a lower intrinsic performance than Intel CPU's, so the Haswell-E 8-core will probably outperform an FX8k in virtualization in a year or so, when all the code is optimised for Haswell-E, but by then AMD will probably have pulled a rabbit out of its hat.
All of that means that right now, today, if virtualization is your focus, and you need a solid start for a reasonable price, the FX-83xx series CPUs will give you the same or better performance than any solution by Intel under 5000 USD. If you're starting a business that depends on virtualization and will scale up in the future, I'd definitely say go for AMD, if for no other reason, then for risk management, because you won't be paying too much if you need to throw it out in 2-3 years if it turns out that everything changes anyway (not very likely), and at least you know everything will work right away from the first second you own the system, you don't have to wait for updated code and optimized applications. Often, it's more important to be able to depend on what something can certainly and reliably do right now, than to buy into something that looks promising for the future, but hasn't been proven yet. That is especially true if you're an enterprise user, and if you're a linux user because you want that ultimate reliability, safety and stability for a minimum of work and headaches. With an AMD FX or Opteron, you know for sure that certain cores are not going to turn out running hotter than others, that you're not going to get thermal throttling, that you're going to be able to set your power management exactly the way you want it, because it's tried and tested, and proven. You know that it's just going to work, and that you'll have it under control, that you won't be wasting your time testing products you've also paid a premium for just to use them, while doing the vendor's debugging.
I just picked up an 8320E thinking it would clock higher than my existing 8320. It couldn't even do 4ghz stable, think I got it to 3920 or something and it was knocking on 62 degrees and failing burn in. My 8320 does 4.4 on 1.42 volts and keeps at 59 in the same test.
Maybe there is variation, the only other info seems to be similar experiences I read on overclock.net.
I have the 970A-UD3P with the 8+2 power stages.
Thanks for the motherboard suggestion, I was flicking through a lot of options and wasn't sure which one I should choose.
For best results with the fx 8 cores you'll be need a Asus 990fx or M5A99fx board.
I bought my fx8320 off ebay for $100 and a Asus Crosshair Formula 990fx for$125.
Got the fx8320 oc'ed to 4.2ghz on stock (auto) voltage. Overclcoks to 5.0ghz at 1.5125v. This winter I'll open the windows in my office and do 5.1 or 5.2ghz.
The fx8370e and 8320e are nothing more than the rare OEM fx8300 95watt that was around early 2012. The difference between the 8370 125watt and 8370e 95watt is the base clock of 3.3ghz vs 4.0ghz they both turbo to 4.3ghz.
Either the fx8320 or 8350 with Asus 990fx board will make a great pc for what your looking to do.