FX 8370 Review

[frozentundra123456]

Anand's review 8370E vs 8370

As I suspected, there is no free lunch. The 8370E loses 700 mhz base frequency to achieve the reduction from 125 watt TDP to 95 watt TDP. The initial rumors that the frequencies were the same for 8370 and 8370E never did make any sense to me.

It is a step in the right direction to lower TDP, but depending on how turbo works, not sure it is worth the lower base clock. Price of 199.00 also seems too high.

 

[exar333]

If ST performance isn't a requirement, this this is 'OK'. If it is, definitely skip this altogether.

 

[NTMBK]

Got to agree with the conclusion- this only makes sense if you're stuck on a 95W AM3+ motherboard.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Anand's review 8370E vs 8370

As I suspected, there is no free lunch. The 8370E loses 700 mhz base frequency to achieve the reduction from 125 watt TDP to 95 watt TDP. The initial rumors that the frequencies were the same for 8370 and 8370E never did make any sense to me.

It is a step in the right direction to lower TDP, but depending on how turbo works, not sure it is worth the lower base clock. Price of 199.00 also seems too high.

There were rumours, which were right. I realized it was likely to be right to. But most people seemed to NOT believe it ...

But I'm too polite to remind people.

If my source is right (see below), then the difference is that the 125 watt FX-8370 is 4.1GHz/4.3 GHz (Turbo), but the 95 w TDP FX-8370E is a 3.3GHz/4.3 GHz (Turbo) part.

Because they are apparently going to be the same price (which tends to rule out binning, being the reason for the differing TDP's), the reduced clock frequency makes much more sense.

N.B. Source is in German (I used google translate).

German language source

 

[monstercameron]

so no progress, why am i not surprised?

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

so no progress, why am i not surprised?

It is a useful option for people who want to upgrade an existing AMD setup, and for people who want to keep the power consumption down to a reasonable level and/or use smaller cases and/or want a potentially quieter system.

Sometimes the AMD prices, continue to drop later. If that is the case, they can still be interesting options for some customers. The 95W parts, will work in more motherboards, because I think, some DON'T support the full 125W. i.e. they max out at 95W.

 

[Sweepr]

Performs worse than the ancient FX8150 in several benchmarks. For some reason Ian included a 4-year old i7 990X in the charts while 4GHz i7 4790K is missing, fun results though, it's amazing how Gulftown can still keep up with newer chips.

 

[Jimzz]

Wish they would have overclocked it to see if the newer spin has more headroom or not? Maybe the next review will do that to see if anything has really change or not.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Performs worse than the ancient FX8150 in several benchmarks. For some reason Ian included a 4-year old i7 990X in the charts while 4GHz i7 4790K is missing, fun results though, it's amazing how Gulftown can still keep up with newer chips.

If you look at the (review in OP) power consumption delta (of the 8370E), it uses approaching half (106 watts less power) the power that the older 8350 uses, with about a 10% to 15%, but probably sometimes much less, speed loss. (Under very heavy load = AVX).

 

[monstercameron]

Wish they would have overclocked it to see if the newer spin has more headroom or not? Maybe the next review will do that to see if anything has really change or not.

josh at pcper did, it ocs as much as a 8350 does so...

 

[frozentundra123456]

If you look at the (review in OP) power consumption delta (of the 8370E), it uses approaching half (106 watts less power) the power that the older 8350 uses, with about a 10% to 15%, but probably sometimes much less, speed loss. (Under very heavy load = AVX).

Too bad he didn't test a different (i.e. newer) 8350. The power consumption on the particular chip he tested seems unusually high, even for the 8350. Apparently the tested 8350 was a very early model.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Too bad he didn't test a different (i.e. newer) 8350. The power consumption on the particular chip he tested seems unusually high, even for the 8350. Apparently the tested 8350 was a very early model.

It was an old one (I remember reading that). Yes, as you and others have said, there are cpus missing from the review.

Especially the 8370 (non-E, 125W TDP) version, as it would be very interesting to see how much speed improvement (not expecting much at all, compared to the 8350), and possible slight power consumption savings, it now gives. Plus its overclocking abilities, which could be slightly better (maybe).

 

[Maximilian]

The more things change the more they stay the same :hmm:

 

[Rvenger]

I am impressed how they got the power consumption in check but the performance suffered bad.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It is a useful option for people who want to upgrade an existing AMD setup, and for people who want to keep the power consumption down to a reasonable level and/or use smaller cases and/or want a potentially quieter system.

My thoughts exactly. I wouldn't consider an 8370E for a new build, but its a fine upgrade if you've got an older AM3+ board with an Athlon2 or Phenom2 dual/quadcore.

 

[USER8000]

I saw this post mentioned on OcUK:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...rdie-told-me&p=5237937&viewfull=1#post5237937

Its by the famous overclocker called The Stilt.

So it is finally the second of September...

So far I have posted a picture of a crown (which once belonged king George XII of Georgia) and hashtags #kg & #Alphabet...

#kg which stands for Kilogram
#Alphabet... "Kilo" stands for "K" in the phonetic alphabet

So what is this all about?

Everything below is highly unofficial of course as is everything else I write here.

Piledriver module based Vishera die has been mass-produced in two different die revisions since the prototyping phase.
While all of the revisions have the same major die version (OR-C0), the minor revision has changed.
Initially the first mass-produced die revision was "India" (OR-C0i, prototype and ES only), the second revision was and still is "Juliett" (OR-C0j, retail) and now finally...
The "Kilo" revision (OR-C0k) a.k.a "King Vishera" a.k.a "Vishera Type-K" has arrived.

The "King Vishera" is initially only available in the new models, FX-8370E & FX-8370.
This is most likely the case with FX-8320E also, however I have not been able to test one of them personally.
The new version is likely to be phased-in at least in the other high-end models such as FX-9590 and at some point in all of the remaining models also.
The alledged metal tapeout of the new revision (alledgedly) occured in the beginning of July. So the only way to get a newer revision part is to get one of the new models, atleast in the beginning.

The differences?

- On average 18% less leakage*1 (0-38%) for FX-8370
- On average 53% less leakage*1 (14-106%) for FX-8370E
- Up to 300MHz higher overclocking margin *12
- 100mV less voltage required for the same clocks on average *1

*1 - Compared to an average FX-8320 or FX-8350 CPU
*2 - When not restricted by the cooling or the motherboard (VRM)

The E-version is the best choice for air or water cooling thanks to the ultra low leakage characteristics.
The non E-version does the same clocks however it might require use of a higher end motherboard (with better VRM) and high-performance cooling.
The non E-version has significantly better overclockability under sub-zero temperatures (phase, LN2) since the leakage levels of the E-version are too low for the purpose.
Having an ultra low leakage characteristics is great under normal conditions however under sub-zero temperatures the voltage requirements become a issue.
Basically the low leakage part exhaust the usable range of supply voltage prior reaching it's maximum frequency.

Based on my own tests, I would estimate that >95% of FX-8370 & FX-8370E parts will reach 4.8GHz frequency in 24/7 without a custom watercooling or a ultra high-end motherboard being a requirement.
As long as the temperature (see below) stays =<65 degree C or 149 degree F and the motherboard has even remotely a sufficient VRM you'll be fine.

On a high-end motherboard and a custom watercooling 5.0G - 5.2GHz+ should be doable in 24/7 use with a good specimen.

These chips still draws a vast amount of power when overclocked so the final overclocking potential is basically just the matter of cooling.
The maximum recommended temperature during the worst case stress is 65?C tCase.

Officially the maximum tCase temperature for the various FX models is specified to:

Infra A - FR (125W TDP) - 61.1 degree C
Infra B - WM (95W TDP) - 70.5 degree C
Infra C - OL (65W TDP) - 70.3 degree C
Infra D - HO (45W TDP) - 69.1 degree C
Infra E - SJ (25W TDP) - 70.0 degree C
Infra F - FH (220W TDP) - 57.0 degree C

The tCase temperature must not be mixed with the tCTL control value sometimes dubbed as the "package temperature".
The tCase temperature is also calculated and it represents the simulated case temperature, measured from the very center of the heatspreader (see the illustration).
Neither tCase or tCTL is the actual die temperature. The actual die temperature information is not directly available on these processors. The actual die temperature is significantly higher
than the tCase or the tCTL control value indicates.

The maximum tCTL control value on all of the FX-series processors is 70 units.
When that value is reached the processor HTC logic engages and starts to reduce the power consumption and dissipation by throttling.
Some of the motherboard manufacturers (such as ASUS) alter the limit manually to reduce the chance for throttling.

So when you are talking about the temperature always use the tCase temperature instead of the tCTL control value.

Here is the examples of the wrong and right values in various monitoring softwares.

Red = Wrong (tCTL)
Green = Right (tCase)

The AOD picture also explains the value dubbed as "Thermal Margin".

Also here is a reminder why Prime95 should not be used as a reference for stability when overclocked. It results significantly higher power draw and emitted thermal than any of the most stressful real world applications.If you still find it absolutely necessary to use Prime95 for stability testing please do it this way:

Run it on only two compute units at once (set the thread count to 4 and affinity accordingly) and decrease the cooling to simulate higher power dissipation.

Only the relative Stock or OC results are comparable.

 

[BSim500]

Good Lord. So the "95w" (125w power draw in reality) 8-core chip really runs at 3.3GHz and gets thrashed in 100% of games by even a 2-core 54w i3-4360 which has almost 70% higher perf per core (149 vs 88 in Cinebench)? And the official 4.0-4.2GHz "125w" CPU is pulling over 220w and still loses to the lowly dual-core i3 in 2 games, draws another 2 and wins in only 1 (Sleeping Dogs) out of 5 by only 4%? D:

 

[Abwx]

I am impressed how they got the power consumption in check but the performance suffered bad.

What is odd is that it does better in MT that its base frequency would imply and much worse in ST in respect of its max turbo, at 4.3 max turbo and single thread it should perform better than almost all other FXs given that ST doesnt require the whole TDP budget.

(125w power draw in reality)

That s a statement made out of ignorance, a power delta at the power supply level is not the CPU consumption.

Edit : with 90% PSU and MB VRMs efficency and a 8W chipset this would amount to 94W and this is without taking account of other items that consume more when the plateform is fully loaded.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Good Lord. So the "95w" (125w power draw in reality) 8-core chip really runs at 3.3GHz and gets thrashed in 100% of games by even a 2-core 54w i3-4360 which has almost 70% higher perf per core (149 vs 88 in Cinebench)? And the official 4.0-4.2GHz "125w" CPU is pulling over 220w and still loses to the lowly dual-core i3 in 2 games, draws another 2 and wins in only 1 (Sleeping Dogs) out of 5 by only 4%? D:

Good lord -- as if anyone should be shocked since this is an architecture that was released in 2012. The FX's have really never been particularly great at playing games.... and since they are derived from Opterons server chips -- that has never been particularly shocking to most people.

The FX's do remain good choices for video editing, scientific computing, cheap servers.... basically the stuff that a server chip would excel at.

 

[Techhog]

Good Lord. So the "95w" (125w power draw in reality) 8-core chip really runs at 3.3GHz and gets thrashed in 100% of games by even a 2-core 54w i3-4360 which has almost 70% higher perf per core (149 vs 88 in Cinebench)? And the official 4.0-4.2GHz "125w" CPU is pulling over 220w and still loses to the lowly dual-core i3 in 2 games, draws another 2 and wins in only 1 (Sleeping Dogs) out of 5 by only 4%? D:

The FX series is more of a budget encoding/game streaming CPU than a gaming chip, really.

 

[Erenhardt]

First thing I would do if I had one of these, would be to check how to disable TDP throttling. </thread>

 

[SlowSpyder]

If what was posted about the "k" chips is accurate, I might have to grab one of those to play with. I have a spare AM3+ board I was going to build anyway. I might put my FX 9370 in the spare board (it is an undervolting champ!) and stick an 8370E in my current system. I am happy to see AM3+ still getting a little love, even it it isn't SteamRoller based.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

First thing I would do if I had one of these, would be to check how to disable TDP throttling. </thread>

What makes you think the 8370E uses/has much TDP throttling ?

It uses a slower base clock, and better optimized process technology (mature process) to get the lower TDP of 95W.

 

[SPBHM]

perform as expected but the power usage difference to their 8350 sample is amazing, it would be interesting to compare to a newer 8350

 

[Erenhardt]

What makes you think the 8370E uses/has much TDP throttling ?

It uses a slower base clock, and better optimized process technology (mature process) to get the lower TDP of 95W.

It rolls back to base clock to stay withing 95W TDP. I would disable TDP limit so it can oparate at turbo speed (+ OC) on all threads and let the motherboard decide if when it needs a break. Iwould disable motherboard VRM protection aswell, just like I have on my fx6300 system