How We Tested & Bandwidth

AMD has supplied us with its elevation-end FX-8150 processor for testing. Thankfully, the FX range is unlocked and the Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX motherboard allowed united states to enable just six, 4 or two cores. This board also allows customization of the Turbo Core and Max Core multiplier. This allowed us to mimic the performance from the lesser iii FX processors launching today: the FX-8120, FX-6100 and FX-4170.

AMD AM3+ Test Arrangement Specs
- AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.30GHz)
- AMD Phenom II X4 980 (three.70GHz)
- AMD FX-8150 (3.60GHz)
- AMD FX-8120 (3.10GHz)
- AMD FX-6100 (3.30GHz)
- AMD FX-4170 (4.20GHz)
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-viii-24)
- Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional (AMD 990FX)
- OCZ ZX Serial 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.38

Intel LGA1155 Test Arrangement Specs
- Intel Cadre i7-2600K
- Intel Core i5-2500K
- x2 4GB K.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS viii-9-8-24)
- Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 (Intel Z68)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.38

Intel LGA1366 Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition (3.33GHz)
- Intel Cadre i7-920 (2.66GHz)
- x3 2GB Grand.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-20)
- Gigabyte G1.Sniper (Intel X58)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.38

Intel LGA1156 Test System Specs
- Intel Cadre i5-750
- x2 4GB Thousand.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-eight-8-20)
- Gigabyte P55A-UD7 (Intel P55)
- OCZ ZX Serial 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.38

Compared to the Phenom Two, AMD'southward FX processors provide significantly more than memory bandwidth. Read throughput has been increased by roughly 60%, while write performance is almost 40% better. Although the bandwidth operation has been improved greatly, it's yet considerably slower than Intel'south Sandy Bridge processors.

The L2 cache performance has also been improved -- at least when looking at the Phenom 2 range. The FX-8150 delivered 30% more than read throughput than the Phenom II X6 1100T, though the write performance was slightly slower. Every bit with the previous nautical chart, Bulldozer just can't match Sandy Bridge's L2 cache performance.