Why does the FX 9590 exist?

[escrow4]

For videographers (or whatever the term is,people who make their living by recording events, editing and transcoding them on dvd/bluray)

3d artists/designers

and even for offices that need to run huge databases,

these chips are actually very compelling since they are cheaper than an I7 and perform equal and better.

For anybody else,pretty much what everybody in this thread said.

Except a 4790K @ stock would blow this away with a fraction of the power used:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1289?vs=1260

and you won't need to worry about melting VRMs on cheapo AM3+ boards.

Saving money with FX is a myth. You may as well get a locked i5/i7 with an H97 board that will cost more but give you a way newer platform and cooler/quieter chip to boot. If AMD carries on with this rubbish their FX CPU division will cease to exist and will revolve entirely around APUs.

 

[Ramses]

Except a 4790K @ stock would blow this away with a fraction of the power used:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1289?vs=1260

and you won't need to worry about melting VRMs on cheapo AM3+ boards.

Saving money with FX is a myth. You may as well get a locked i5/i7 with an H97 board that will cost more but give you a way newer platform and cooler/quieter chip to boot. If AMD carries on with this rubbish their FX CPU division will cease to exist and will revolve entirely around APUs.

Current popular opinion is that the FX line and desktop CPU's in general have in fact ceased to exist. What are these things, three years old now?

The price tags don't look like a myth to me though still.


I looked really hard at that $300+ i7 before I bought my 8350 (for $180 at the time and then bought a 9590 for $230ish later, because fun). I looked at the performance I had from my 955BE that I'd had for years, I looked at the performance I'd had from a 1090T for a few months. I looked at the benchmarks that showed i5's and i7's seemingly so much faster than the FX. I looked at them compared to the 1090T I had at the time. I decided something didn't make since because that 1090T honestly was plenty fast with few exceptions. So I looked harder at the benchmarks. After some pondering, I decided to save a hundred bucks and bought the 8350, and it performed admirably. As does the 9590. I've no doubt the Intel stuff benches better, but it is my personal and experienced opinion that benchmarks the way they are related online do not reflect adequately a true user experience. I spend 18 hours a day in front of this screen for work and pleasure, if it was in any way slow or annoying, I'd replace it in a heartbeat. I haven't yet. And despite buying one of if not the most power hungry and hot running CPU's in existence, I can't tell it. My GPU's dwarf the heat production and power usage of the 9590, which is at nearly idle most of the time anyway. My utility bill is the same as it was last year (i checked). My case is still 30C this time of year, socket is 33C, might see mid 50's gaming. Yawn. The power/heat bit is overblown to me. To each their own though.

One myth is, that a cheap FX does not offer a perfectly adequate user experience, gaming or otherwise, in/to the vast majority of situations/users, despite it's sometimes low benchmark scores. What you read on a forum or review site does not always translate into real life.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1534128/vishera-vs-devils-canyon-a-casual-comparison-by-an-average-user

This fellow has done some interesting work here, mostly demonstrating that a budget CPU with a better GPU is preferable to an expensive CPU and cheaper GPU, but overall it does a good job dispelling the FX isn't good for gaming bit, which is also a myth.
There are a few games that can't adequately use an FX, but personally after seeing how Crysis 3 and BF4 and anything else I've found to try runs on my system, I'm not willing to accept excuses for shoddy software anymore.

As far as I can tell you should buy Intel if you can afford it and/or if image and benches matter to you, or more importantly if you actually can use the speed increase they offer. And it's ok if image and benches do matter to you, lots of folks are that way. If you're a cheap SOB tinker like myself and are concerned with how things actually perform and get a kick out of eccentric non-mainstream machines and making them work better than everyone else, the FX will likely have something to offer you. It's a shame we're all going to find ourselves at the mercy of Intel in the coming years for desktop CPU's unless something drastic happens. Luckily performance has been increasing so slowly I don't see the legacy FX line ceasing to be relevant for a long while.

Oh, and I have an i7 laptop which is very nice also, so I'm not especially biased.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Your philosophy makes sense, and I agree with most of your post. All I would disagree with is blaming the software for FX performance in a lot of games. The games you mentioned are particularly well threaded, and are probably the absolute best case for the FX. But there are plenty of games where an i3 is equal to an FX at the same or lower cost and much lower power usage, not to mention an i5.

As for not excusing the software, you really have no choice. You either play the game as it is programmed, reprogram the game yourself(obviously not an option), or dont play it. The software "is what it is", whether you like it or not. No amount of indignation about the way a poorly threaded game (or application for that matter) is programmed will make it run any better on an FX. That is the problem for FX, really. In the best case for gaming, it is similar to an i5, and worst case, as much as 40 or 50 percent slower.

As to the 9590, obviously AMD was trying to boost its image with the "first 5ghz processor" and make as much money as possible. Nothing wrong with that, but it was a joke at the initial prices they tried to sell it at. Now that the price has come down, it is a good value if you make heavy use of the multithreaded apps it is best at, but would not be my choice for gaming.

 

[rfs830]

Great info there Ramses. Your information here was why I went with my fx chip. My 9590 will keep my happy for a while. And if I do upgrade down the road, my current pc will make a nice dedicated VM box.

 

[SPBHM]

I personally find the 9590 pointless, if you want an FX go with those 8320E and overclock it to 4.2-4.5GHz

a lot cheaper, almost the same performance and much lower power draw.

 

[Abwx]

I personally find the 9590 pointless, if you want an FX go with those 8320E and overclock it to 4.2-4.5GHz

a lot cheaper, almost the same performance and much lower power draw.

Binning wise the best chips seems to be said 9590 and 9370, chips like 8370, 8370E and 8350 are almost as good apparently and undoubtly better, on average, than the 8320E and of course the regular 8320.

For the lower cores count Hardware.fr point the 6350 and 4350 as being above the 6300 and 4300 respectively, the 4350 particularly has the full 8MB cache like the 6 and 8 cores variants and is nowhere close to its alleged 125W TDP rating, a supply chain convenient rating more than anything else.

 

[rfs830]

I went with the 9590 over the 8350 just so I would not have to mess with overclocking it. It was only a 40 dollar more. At 220 for the 9590 its a great price.

 

[Ramses]

Your philosophy makes sense, and I agree with most of your post. All I would disagree with is blaming the software for FX performance in a lot of games. The games you mentioned are particularly well threaded, and are probably the absolute best case for the FX. But there are plenty of games where an i3 is equal to an FX at the same or lower cost and much lower power usage, not to mention an i5.

As for not excusing the software, you really have no choice. You either play the game as it is programmed, reprogram the game yourself(obviously not an option), or dont play it. The software "is what it is", whether you like it or not. No amount of indignation about the way a poorly threaded game (or application for that matter) is programmed will make it run any better on an FX. That is the problem for FX, really. In the best case for gaming, it is similar to an i5, and worst case, as much as 40 or 50 percent slower.

As to the 9590, obviously AMD was trying to boost its image with the "first 5ghz processor" and make as much money as possible. Nothing wrong with that, but it was a joke at the initial prices they tried to sell it at. Now that the price has come down, it is a good value if you make heavy use of the multithreaded apps it is best at, but would not be my choice for gaming.

It's a matter of philosophy and it's based on where I came from and experience/preference, so it's not really something to be right or wrong about, either view is as valid as another to me. I would no more argue it than I would about a mans taste in women, cars or politics.
Myself, I have the intestinal fortitude to just not play games that aren't able to take advantage of a handful of cores and run ok on this thing. I spent a lot of years on dual pentium pro, pentium II and III and some dual S370 stuff on windows NT and eventually 2K, back when there were not multi core CPU's, SMP was workstation/server land stuff, so almost nothing was able to use multiple CPU's, etc, etc, etc. It's not unlike using Linux years ago either, part of the fun and challenge is dealing with not being able to have it as easy as everyone else. Easy is for women and kittens.

Certainly not a gaming cpu per-se, but it's fairly capable, economical, you don't see yourself coming and going on every road as they say in car circles, and it's damn sure entertaining. That's enough to count me in. As soon as it starts dragging if I can't crutch it with some subsystem upgrade, out it'll go.

 

[Ramses]

I went with the 9590 over the 8350 just so I would not have to mess with overclocking it. It was only a 40 dollar more. At 220 for the 9590 its a great price.

Yeah that's what got me to, between the resale of my 8350 at the time and a price alert for what I was willing to pay on newegg, it was an easy purchase.

In the course of a couple years or less I sold me 955BE for fifty bucks in a PC I built a guy, bought a 1090t locally for like fifty bucks, sold it for almost a hundred on ebay, bought an 8350 for 180 I think it was, sold IT for like 150 after almost a year and paid 220 or 230 for the 9590 lol. I don't think I've ever come so near breaking even buying and selling computer parts in my life.
Wish my musical-GPU's had worked out so well..

 

[SPBHM]

Binning wise the best chips seems to be said 9590 and 9370, chips like 8370, 8370E and 8350 are almost as good apparently and undoubtly better, on average, than the 8320E and of course the regular 8320.

For the lower cores count Hardware.fr point the 6350 and 4350 as being above the 6300 and 4300 respectively, the 4350 particularly has the full 8MB cache like the 6 and 8 cores variants and is nowhere close to its alleged 125W TDP rating, a supply chain convenient rating more than anything else.

well, it's seems good enough, hitting the limits you would expect from a current Vishera
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8864/amd-fx-8320e-cpu-review-the-other-95w-vishera/2

should be fine for 4.2-4.5GHz, and going over that for Vishera is clearly not worth it anyway.

 

[Abwx]

well, it's seems good enough, hitting the limits you would expect from a current Vishera
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8864/amd-fx-8320e-cpu-review-the-other-95w-vishera/2

should be fine for 4.2-4.5GHz, and going over that for Vishera is clearly not worth it anyway.

Hardware.fr tested a 8370E instead, notice that at 4.8GHz they had a real voltage of 1.428V for a 1.375V VID.

At the same frequency Anand s 8320E is pushed to 1.55V, Hardware.fr dont test above 1.45V and overclocking stabilty and power comsumption is done with Prime 95, their 8370E seems quite better than Anand s 8320E, besides their results match what Computerbase.de got with the 8370E, overall and with a regular heavy multithreaded loading their sample should be within 125W TDP up to 4.3-4.4GHz.

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/99/amd-fx-8370e-fx-8-coeurs-95-watts-test.html

Edit : At 4.5 Anand s sample require 4.1% higher voltage, that s about 8.3% higher TDP as a result, not that much but indicative of the slightly better binning.

 

[ninaholic37]

I think they should have kept the FX-9590 at $999 or whatever it was. Make it a collectors item for the hardest of hardcore AMD fans or those who are too impatient to wait years for something new. I wonder if they're actually selling 3 times more with it being $300 (or however many more would be needed for them to make more profit).

 

[Ramses]

I think they should have kept the FX-9590 at $999 or whatever it was. Make it a collectors item for the hardest of hardcore AMD fans or those who are too impatient to wait years for something new. I wonder if they're actually selling 3 times more with it being $300 (or however many more would be needed for them to make more profit).

When I was watching it weekly on newegg it kept selling out fwiw.

 

[ninaholic37]

When I was watching it weekly on newegg it kept selling out fwiw.

Interesting, I wonder how many FX-9590s are in circulation. 10,000? 100,000? Maybe they lowered the price because they needed the money fast to pay off expenses lol...

 

[Ramses]

I'd be shocked if they made any meaningful amount of em. I'd be curious to know how the FX line in general sold too but I don't think that sort of info really gets out in a straightforward form, if at all.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I personally find the 9590 pointless, if you want an FX go with those 8320E and overclock it to 4.2-4.5GHz

a lot cheaper, almost the same performance and much lower power draw.

I used to think this, but after I saw what people (like SlowSpyder) were capable of doing with an FX-9xxx chip in the 4-4.5 ghz range, I realized that the high-end chips were the best underclocker/undervolter chips provided you were willing to pay a premium up front.

You can get an FX-8310 for $100 less, but it will use maybe .1v more to achieve 4.4 ghz, which is a pretty big TDP differential.

The main thing is that people usually want to hit 5+ ghz on their 9590. More power to em, if they're willing to cool the thing.

 

[SlowSpyder]

When I was watching it weekly on newegg it kept selling out fwiw.

On launch day I snagged a FX 9590 for under $400 (I think it was $370) on Amazon, third party seller. Was told it was a special launch price. Kept waiting for it to ship, it never did. Long story short they gave me a $25 credit to use, they didn't care that the prices shot up to $800 the next day, couldn't find an FX 9590 for anywhere close to what I originally paid. But, my FX 9370 does well, I doubt I'd get anything significantly different in clock speeds with the FX 9590, but I wanted it just because it was the top part. Either way, I think AMD saying f*** it and releasing these muscle car like FX 9xxx's is great, and I'm very happy with mine.

 

[Bradtech519]

People with capable existing AM3+ motherboards that want a drop in upgrade/better binned CPU. My FX 8350 doesn't take kind to any overclock at all, just one of those chips. I've considered getting at the very least another FX8350 or dropping in one of the FX9000 chips to get the most out of my board. I would probably need to look into getting at least a closed loop water cooler though.

 

[Ramses]

People with capable existing AM3+ motherboards that want a drop in upgrade/better binned CPU. My FX 8350 doesn't take kind to any overclock at all, just one of those chips. I've considered getting at the very least another FX8350 or dropping in one of the FX9000 chips to get the most out of my board. I would probably need to look into getting at least a closed loop water cooler though.

NH D14/15 is more than enough if your ambient is under 80F ime.
Unless it don't fit your case that is.

 

[Bradtech519]

NH D14/15 is more than enough if your ambient is under 80F ime.
Unless it don't fit your case that is.

Yeah, my ambient is anywhere from 68-73F. My FX 8350 and any replacement would be running 100% load 24/7. I've read where some have problems keeping it cool under those conditions even with the liquid cooling. I'm not familiar with the NH D14/15. I use the Zalman in my sig below. I'm cleaning my rig out this weekend & reapplying thermal paste. I'm really tempted to get the 9370/9590 since my 8350 needs to be fed so much voltage for pathetic bumps. Would the NH D14/15 be a lot better than the cooler in my sig?

 

[Ramses]

I'd be shocked if the D14 or D15 wasn't 5-10 degrees better under load, but you have to move the air out of the case, and a lot of it, for the fast FX's. What are you doing that's loading them 100% all the time? Folding or something like that? Do people still fold? lol
If you aren't in a huge hurry I'll load mine up and see what it is over ambient, I haven't checked it in awhile.

 

[Ramses]

10 minutes with eight instances of CPU Burn running, ambient at case inlet is
19C, case is FT02, all stock fans PWM via BIOS on Normal or Quiet setting, I forget which. It's not loud, not silent, not loud. FWIW...

 

[Bradtech519]

10 minutes with eight instances of CPU Burn running, ambient at case inlet is
19C, case is FT02, all stock fans PWM via BIOS on Normal or Quiet setting, I forget which. It's not loud, not silent, not loud. FWIW...

That is good results! Yeah, I'm doing "distributed computing" through a program called BOINC. We have a sub-forum here called Distributed Computing. I usually have my R9 290 going 100% & 7 cores on the FX 8350 going with the GPU task using some of the available free core left.

 

[Ramses]

Yeah I really haven't had any trouble cooling these things, I know it's not hot here by any stretch but still, non issue with a good cooler. Side info: my UPS which has a ton of stuff plugged in it showed 396w during that test, bout 200 at idle, and the humidity was 55%.

 

[rfs830]

I am very happy with the D15 in my set up. My temps are very great for a 9590. I am only using the 2 fans thst came with my case. I did just buy 4 D 140mm fans to give it even better air flow.