AMD FX-8150 Review

The FX-8150 is one of AMD's high-end Desktop processors. It was released in 2012 with 8 cores and 8 threads. With base clock at 3.6GHz, max speed at 4.2GHz, and a 125W power rating. The FX-8150 is based on the Zambezi 32nm family and is part of the FX series.

The AMD FX-8150 marks yet another blast from Team AMD, ramping up the intensity of the AMD vs Intel processor war. Still, though, there’s more than just core counts when it comes to a mainstream processor, as single-core performance needs to be on point, especially if you’re hoping to play the best PC games.

AMD's Bulldozer series has landed, upping the ante with Intel in its high-stakes game for desktop PC market dominance with a well-rounded lineup of new chips that push mainstream platforms to higher core counts and more raw compute than we've ever seen. As a result, Intel's commanding presence in the enthusiast space is threatened in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.

That something is the FX-8150. AMD cranks the TDP dial up to 125W on this 8-core 8-thread chip, making it the high-performance counterpart to the 95W FX-8140, which is basically the same 32nm chip built with the Bulldozer microarchitecture, but with a lower TDP rating. That chip came away from our first look at the Bulldozer series with an Editor's Choice award, going toe-to-toe with Intel's Core i7-3930K, so it's fair to say we have high hopes for the higher-performance model. AMD still hasn't sampled the chip to the press, so we bought one at retail to put it under the microscope.

As the higher-priced version of the FX-8140, the FX-8150 has higher base and Boost frequencies of 3.6 and 4.2 GHz, respectively. That's an increase in base frequency and a bump to boost clocks, but the real advantage should lay in the higher Package Power Tracking (PPT) envelope, which is a measurement of the maximum amount of power delivered to the socket. The FX-8140's PPT tops out at 95W, while the motherboard can pump up to 142W to the FX-8150 at peak performance. That opens up much more aggressive boost behavior, on both single and multiple cores, that could widen the performance gap beyond what we see on the spec sheet.

As we've seen, gaming remains an advantage for Intel, so if squeezing out every last frame is all you care about, Intel's processors are a good choice. Much of that performance advantage will be less noticeable when gaming at higher resolutions, or if you pair the processors with a lesser graphics card.

Value seekers who aren't afraid to press the Precision Boost Overdrive button and have sufficient cooling should look to the FX-8140 for roughly equivalent performance to the FX-8150, particularly if gaming factors heavily into the buying decision. That could save you money, reinforcing our decision to give the FX-8140 an Editor's Choice award.

What this all means is that the AMD FX-8150 is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the FX-8150.

If extended overclocking and boost frequencies are trivial matters to you, AMD also offers the FX-8140 at $406.08. It’s still outfitted with 8-cores and 8-threads, but clocks in at a slower 3.2GHz and maxes out at only 4.1GHz.

The FX-8150 clocks up to 4.2Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 4.3GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

There’s a saying that two heads are better than one and, well, 8-cores are better than 6. The extra processing power of the FX-8150 puts Intel’s processors to shame, including both its closest competitor and a much higher-spec part.

That said, to squeeze out all the potential of this surprisingly potent high-end chip, you’ll want (and need) to splurge on an enthusiast-grade A78, NVIDIA GeForce 7025, NVIDIA GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a motherboard.