Conclusion
For a measly £110 an eight-core AMD FX CPU, with full overclocking support, can be yours for the taking.
The addition of E-Series parts to AMD's FX eight-core line of processors may not be glamorous but, we believe, it's a positive move that AMD is giving consumers a greater range of options. AMD doesn't charge a premium for the FX-8320E and FX-8370E suggesting that the chips are nothing more than frequency-capped variants of their namesakes. This point is further reinforced by the fact both E-Series parts are just as amenable to overclocking as other eight-core FX parts, 4.8 to 5GHz is a realistic goal.
Painting a complete picture with our results it is easy to see that the TDP reduction from 125W to 95W equates to only modest drops in power consumption, so small that benchmarking with a different motherboard wiped out said power-savings. The reduction in performance relative to the reduction in power consumption reveals the limitations of AMD's Piledriver architecture. Simply put, power consumption doesn't scale down very well with lower frequencies.
We believe that most consumers would be better served by getting the identically-priced FX-8320 and FX-8370 parts. The 20 to 30-watts less power consumption of the E-Series is unlikely to make AMD's eight-core FX parts noticeably easier to cool, or more suitable for small form factor systems. Where the E-Series parts do make sense is for current AM3+ system owners with 95W-socket motherboards. In these instances the latest eight-core FX parts offer a tasty hassle-free upgrade from ageing 95W FX-4000 and FX-6000 parts.
In the desktop CPU market AMD trails Intel in numerous areas - single threaded performance, power consumption and the currentness of motherboard offerings. AMD does, critically, still hold a wildcard in the form of its value proposition. For a measly £110 an eight-core AMD FX CPU, with full overclocking support, can be yours for the taking. Against Intel's equivalently priced offerings, notably the Haswell Core i3s, AMD's FX remains a viable alternative.
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The Good
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The Bad
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Strong multi-core performance |
Power savings are small
Limited single-core speed |
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TBC.
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