Nice! Potential Price Reduction for Vishera

[shaq_mobile]

http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-8350-process ... usd-price/

I don't know if this is legit or not, if it is, that's pretty good news. For the price, I think that it will be competitive. I hope to see some benchmarks out pretty soon.

[just brew it!]

This is really more of a "good news, bad news" sort of thing. Lots of cores on the cheap is nice, but the fact that they're pricing them like this all but guarantees that performance will be a disappointment (otherwise they'd be able to charge more for them).

[shaq_mobile]

Yeah, it looks like they're pricing them to reflect their performance increase (according to the few internet sources I found) compared to the loldozer. I wouldn't mind snagging one of these and overclocking it to 4.8ghz. I could always use another space heater.

[Arclight]

I expect a performance increase a la Barcelona B3.

[Ryhadar]

Could be pretty sweet for those who like to run many VMs. Bulldozer seems to excel there over Intel anyway, even if it is because AMD has more physical cores.

[just brew it!]

Could be pretty sweet for those who like to run many VMs. Bulldozer seems to excel there over Intel anyway, even if it is because AMD has more physical cores.

It also looks like you don't need to move up to server hardware to get IOMMU support (some of Asus' desktop AM3+ boards support it). This could be handy for anyone who needs to pass physical I/O devices directly into the VMs.

[I.S.T.]

The link talking about Vishera having a price performance ratio higher than Intel's made me go "ugh". In some applications(VMs being a GREAT example!) yes, but 90% of folks? Nope.

[shaq_mobile]

even in games though, the og loldozer did pretty decent in *benchmarks* after it was overclocked according to this: http://techreport.com/review/21848/amd- ... rclocked/2

if it does cost $20 less than a 2500K, the new 8350 should be fairly competitive. crank it up to 11 and it may even be a pretty good CPU. Probly gonna have to compensate that $20 for a better PSU htough ;p

[absurdity]

I went through this, and I think you're cheating yourself with AMD if you think it's a better purchase because of VM performance - it might do that better (if you can even notice it), but unless that's really the only thing you do, Intel is just a far superior all-around product. I have to believe it'd take quite a VM load to start bottle-necking on the CPU (my E8400 was never a bottleneck, and now I have a 3570K). Even on most production servers that my company manages, CPU usage on average in most cases is very low. Disk throughput and memory are what will hurt you.

If you're going to build a box for yourself to run ESXi and you'll be running 12 VMs on it, then sure, go AMD.

[ronch]

It's good to see AMD pricing VIshera appropriately. Hopefully, retailers will not do a repeat of Bulldozer, where they priced the darn things higher than AMD's MSRP.

It's also a bit disturbing to see AMD hungry for sales. I suppose Bulldozer's price tumbled a lot because AMD just couldn't sell them well enough, and Trinity not being able to come out because AMD wanted to clear the channel of old Llano stock, a possible indication that there were also too much Llano chips floating in the channel. Hence, they are hungry for sales, but they're pricing their chips as though they're practically begging people to buy them, and that's just bad for their bottomline.

[Crayon Shin Chan]

Piledriver isn't a big enough improvement over Bulldozer that I'd want to upgrade. As far as I'm concerned, it might as well just be a higher clocked version of Bulldozer.

[phileasfogg]

I checked these "new" prices (unconfirmed by AMD of course) against some previously published price data (from other web sources) in Q2 and Q3-2012. Now, one might argue that the older price data was irrelevant anyway because it was all speculation. But, as others have pointed out, AMD appears to be adjusting quickly to market forces. Good for them!

FX8350 (old data $253) -- new price $200 (I just rounded up to 200, it could be $19x). // 21% reduction
(8c, 8MB L2, 8MB L3, 125W, 4.0->T4.2Ghz)

FX8320 (old data $242) -- new price $175 // 27.7% reduction
(8c, 8MB L2, 8MB L3, 125W, 3.5->T4.0Ghz)

FX6300 (old data $175) -- new price $135 // 23% reduction
(6c, 6MB L2, 8MB L3, 95W, 3.5->T4.1Ghz)

FX4300 (old data $131) -- new price $125 //4.6% reduction
(4c, 4MB L2, 8MB L3, 95W, 3.8Ghz->T4.0Ghz)

Clearly, the FX4300 took the smallest *percentage* price hit, while the FX8320 got the biggest percentage haircut.

IMHO, the FX6300 is the most tempting of the lot, not only because of the attractive price but because of the 95W TDP.

[sircharles32]

This is more like it. The prices are much more attractive. However, I've yet to hear of any motherboard manufacturers readying even new revisions (guaranteed pre-install of the necessary BIOS updates to run Vishera) of preexisting boards. The current situation maybe fine for upgraders, but does make things more difficult for those of us that will build from scratch.
Now to see how much of a hit it will take in comparison to Thuban and Deneb, on single/lightly threaded apps. We've already seen that Bulldozer wasn't bad with heavily multi-threaded apps.
It might just be in that "good enough" category for me to include it in my upcoming build.

Also of interest: power consumption (both idle and load)

[Yeats]

This is really more of a "good news, bad news" sort of thing. Lots of cores on the cheap is nice, but the fact that they're pricing them like this all but guarantees that performance will be a disappointment (otherwise they'd be able to charge more for them).

Given AMD's history of an "early adopter tax", I agree with you 100%.

Good news: more and faster cores for only $200!
Bad news: it's AMD

Last year I got a free FX-8120, put it in my brother's rig and it's been happily running @ 4.75ghz for nearly a year with a Corsair H80. If I'm given an 8320/8350, I'm shooting for 5ghz.

[just brew it!]

Last year I got a free FX-8120, put it in my brother's rig and it's been happily running @ 4.75ghz for nearly a year with a Corsair H80. If I'm given an 8320/8350, I'm shooting for 5ghz.

I'd be a little surprised if you get any more clock headroom with the 83xx. AFAIK the tweaks they've implemented are mainly to improve IPC.

[Yeats]

Last year I got a free FX-8120, put it in my brother's rig and it's been happily running @ 4.75ghz for nearly a year with a Corsair H80. If I'm given an 8320/8350, I'm shooting for 5ghz.

I'd be a little surprised if you get any more clock headroom with the 83xx. AFAIK the tweaks they've implemented are mainly to improve IPC.

Maybe - I know that much depends on the luck of the draw. According to AMD marketing dude Brent Barry, Piledriver will be "15% more efficient, 7% higher IPC, and 7% higher frequency".

I did CPU-Z validate that FX-8120 @ 5016mhz.

"Keep Your Feet on the Ground, and Keep Reaching for the Stars" - Casey Kasem