AMD FX-8150 8-Core CPU Review: Bulldozer Is Here

Name: AMD FX-8150 8-Core Processor
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 12:02 AM EDT

Futuremark PCMark 7 Tests

Futuremark's PCMark 7 is the latest version of the PCMark suite. It has updated application performance measurements targeted for a Windows 7 environment. Here's what Futuremark says is incorporated in the base PCMark suite and the Entertainment suite, the two modules we have benchmark scores for you here.

Futuremark PCMark 7

General Application and Multimedia Performance

The PCMark test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance during typical desktop usage. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system
Storage

Windows Defender

Importing pictures

Gaming

Video Playback and transcoding
Graphics

DirectX 9

Image manipulation
Web browsing and decrypting

The Entertainment test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in entertainment scenarios using mostly application workloads. Individual tests include recording, viewing, streaming and transcoding TV shows and movies, importing, organizing and browsing new music and several gaming related workloads. If the target system is not capable of running DirectX 10 workloads then those tests are skipped. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given an Entertainment test score.

The new AMD FX-8150 has no problem outrunning the Phenom II X6 1100T in PCMark7's overall system test, but it trails the six-core processor slightly in the Entertainment benchmark. The FX-8150 also competes well with the Core i7-970 and Sandy-Bridge based Core i5-2500K here, but the Core i7-2600K runs away with this one, no matter how you slice it.