we were lied to

the 8320e was the worst of the fx8 chips
it has functional cores, but very poor performance next to the 8350

8320e is 3.2ghz,vs 4ghz on 8350
and its 4 cores with smt, not 8 cores like amd claimed

what many were doing with fx and cpu bottlenecked with a high-mid grade gpu, was just raise visual settings, so the gpu was more loaded, and fps difference was minimal

fx was basically intel 1st-2nd gen i series core performance
4th gen i series was better in every way

That was back in the days when they'd run GPU-limited games to prove that there was no difference between Intel and AMD CPUs when the games weren't CPU-limited.

You have to overclock the fsb and lower the multiplier ratio until you get to 4.5+. OCing the multiplier doesn't do much by itself.

The funny thing is just yesterday I was dealing with a person complaining about steams "library performance issues" with an outdated win7 steam client and from the speed they gave me, they were using that chip; the 8320e - which they then later said was a 'downclocked 8350' which is a strange thing for someone to do when receiving enough power and "water cooling it".

FX chips were only good in terms of being affordable, good-enough to run basic things and some games, but its overall performance and temperature were always known to be fairly terrible.

Ryzen and TR was when AMD got serious about being better performing chips rather than just affordable compared to intel. Also amd started having cooler running chips with ryzen, whereas intels was starting to run hotter.

Fx8120 was last chip had 1070 on it was ok

If anything, even back then in 2011-2012. people knew that the FX lineup wasn't too great.
the IPC was below Intel's Sandy Bridge by a large margin and of course multithreading in the early 2010s wasn't really common

Though you have some people now kinda revisiting FX and say "it aged well" cause a whole lot of things are multithreaded now but too little, too late. by the time those CPUs got to "shine" you can grab used R5 3600/R7 2700s or so for literally nothing

Originally posted by Lixire:

If anything, even back then in 2011-2012. people knew that the FX lineup wasn't too great.

Everybody knew, it's why they nearly went bankrupt, well they were bankrupt in essence hanging on by a thread selling off what they could and only making any money from the GPU division.

If Zen was a failure AMD would be gone as we know it, broken up and sold out but it was always going to be a decent chip with Jim at the helm who set them off on a path, he made the OG Athlon 64.

fx was a step back from aii/pii
all it really offered was more cores

it has lower ipc, but higher clocks to compensate

but fx did make intel scramble to put more cores on cpus
so good on amd for that

ryzen was another game changer, and again forced intel to put more cores on cpus again

One result, a landscape does not make. Sometimes, a particular result is an outlier from the average trend. That being said, the FX series was indeed pretty bad and tended to lose across the board.

I'm not really sure why you're surprised of it losing to a Haswell though. The FX chips were commonly losing to Sandy Bridge (and often by a lot), and while Haswell isn't vastly faster than that, the FX chips were already so much slower than Sandy Bridge that it added up. A good overclocked Haswell or stock Sky Lake are common comparison points to where the original Ryzen's performance often was, and Ryzen was like, what, commonly stated to be a 59% average improvement on its predecessor? So yeah, of course that predecessor is going to be much, much slower than Haswell.

Originally posted by AbedsBrother:

Thinking back to the techtubers all those years ago who hyped FX chips as "not that bad," there's no way they didn't know FX was massively behind Intel at the time, regardless of workload.

I didn't pay much mind to YouTube for hardware back then, but I didn't notice much hyping of those CPUs. On forums and in most text reviews I saw, everyone knew what was what. Everyone knew they were much slower.

Sure, there were the "it's not that bad" claims, but usually when I saw that, it was pointing out that the difference in practice would be smaller than shown in reviews, which was... often true. Reviews tested them at low game settings/resolutions to intentionally remove GPU bottlenecks, which is the correct way to compare them, but in practice most people were GPU limited. So there's certainly some practical truth to it, but that angle misses out on the fact that the faster CPU will go longer before needing upgraded (this was my common response to that particular point back then).

The same is still said today (just in reverse insofar as the brands go). People say "you don't need an x800X3D CPU because that Core Ultra 5 can be about as good".

Originally posted by EricOfMelnibone:

That was back in the days when they'd run GPU-limited games to prove that there was no difference between Intel and AMD CPUs when the games weren't CPU-limited.

Huh? Knowing how to properly ensure that a GPU limitation doesn't mask CPU comparisons isn't some "only in the last ten years" knowledge or anything. I recall that this was known stuff two decades ago when I first started learning.

Maybe some sources made that mistake.

Maybe some sources, or more commonly some end users, would use results that were GPU limited to imply the more practical result, since most people were GPU limited.

But this knowledge itself isn't a new discovery.

Originally posted by _I_:

but fx did make intel scramble to put more cores on cpus
so good on amd for that

That would have been Ryzen, no?

The original Core i series already had hex cores on the HEDT platform, and quad cores on the mainstream one. That was late 2000s. Intel's core offerings remained that way until the 8th generation, which... launched right after Ryzen. FX was the very early 2010s and that was precisely the years when Intel infamously came out and said "no, we won't add more cores yet because there's no need, and there's also no space anyway, and no we won't remove the IGP nobody wants to get more space". The real reason is they realized they could afford to stagnate because FX was so far behind.

Ryzen is what lit the "we need more cores" fire beneath them, which is why the 8th, 9, and 10 generations were all panic increases for 3 generations in a row, after 7 generations of no increase.

both, fx was right before first gen i series
which were mainly dual core some with ht
from 4th gen to 6th, i5 was quad, and i7 4 with ht, i3/pentium g were dual

Originally posted by Pretty Good:

You have to overclock the fsb and lower the multiplier ratio until you get to 4.5+. OCing the multiplier doesn't do much by itself.

Northbridge and HT are both around 2200mhz. I'm going to try to push them a bit, but hwinfo isn't picking up a NB temp sensor, so am hesitant to push it too hard. Also would like to push the cpu further, to maybe 4.2. Right it's at 4 Ghz with 1.45v. Maybe bus overclocking would be a better option? Been browsing a few legacy forums, have seen some people from the time advocating for that.

Still learning the AM3 overclocking tricks, thankfully the M5A99FX has the same bios layout as my old FM2 build, which was also on an Asus board, so I'm not totally at sea.

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

*snip*

I knew FX would be behind Haswell. I always assumed FX would be good for 60fps, but not much beyond that. Which would be fine imo.

I know a lot of people hate on Wonderlands, but it's a great benchmarking game. Unreal 4, DX11 and DX12 options, FSR2 (dx12 only), 'only' around 45gb installation size, and unlike Borderlands 3 (at least at launch) decently optimized. The main town has long draw distances and a lot of npcs. Definitely needs 8 cpu threads - I wouldn't try an old i5 with it - but a Haswell i7, even a non-k, will handle everything up to about 70-85fps. I even hooked up a Vega 64 to a 4790 and could play Wonderlands at 1440p High and never dipped below 60fps.

Like I said: I knew FX would be behind. I didn't think it would be THIS bad.

Originally posted by Illusion of Progress:

Ryzen is what lit the "we need more cores" fire beneath them, which is why the 8th, 9, and 10 generations were all panic increases for 3 generations in a row, after 7 generations of no increase.

AMD actually caught a perfect storm, cores were never added through panic from Intel as to get a CPU from pen to production is a years long process, they were having fab problems and that's what AMD caught off guard beating them massively in efficiency and value and value coming from the chiplets vs a big monolithic die, first zen was a bit sketchy to be fair but it was good enough and cheap enough, the first great AMD chip was the 50xx series in my eyes with the worst wrinkles ironed out.

Worst thing ZEN did was expose Intel's struggling fabs more, as I think it's TSMC’s advanced manufacturing that screwed Intel more than anything, I hope they get back on track fully.

If Intel's fabs were on par with TSMC at the time and moving forward we would have had an epic CPU war for the crown, Intel would have won too in fairness just due to software stability and that's why AMD has a tough time breaking into enterprise.

Originally posted by _I_:

both, fx was right before first gen i series

My favourite i series when OCing was fun, i7 930 2.8Ghz clocked to 4.4Ghz with bit over 1.4v pumping through it, ran like that till the day i sold it.

Originally posted by AbedsBrother:

I know a lot of people hate on Wonderlands

Aww don't say that, I'v done 1,2,3 and prequel that's the last one on the list.

I loved my fx-8350 and always will. That is all.