What's Wrong with the FX Series CPUs?

[jaysangwan32]

Hey guys!

So I've been helping a friend plan a budget build and have been comparing a slew of various CPUs. The top 2 CPUs I was looking at were the R3 1200 and the G4560.

However, recently I've noticed an older AMD FX series of CPUs. Why aren't these CPUs discussed as much compared to Ryzen. Looking at a 3.5ghz 6 core processor for $80 (FX-8300) and a 4.7 ghz 8 core processor for only $120 (FX-9590) seems fairly promising.

Why aren't these chips used more often? Would an FX chip be better for a budget CPU, since I can get more physical cores and higher frequencies for the same price or cheaper?

Thanks for the help!

[Lurick]

They are ancient chips from 2011-2012. They don't have the performance of modern day stuff like the G4560 and R3 1200 and consume much more power and put out more heat as well. Cores and frequency do not equal performance.

[jaysangwan32]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

They are ancient chips from 2011-2012. They don't have the performance of modern day stuff like the G4560 and R3 1200 and consume much more power and put out more heat as well. Cores and frequency do not equal performance.

What specifically makes the G4560 more powerful?

Sorry I'm pretty new at the PC building process, so I really only know to look at cores and frequency..

[3 Lions]

They are old and just overall terrible in every-way possible. 

[Lurick]

Just now, jaysangwan32 said:

What specifically makes the G4560 more powerful?

Sorry I'm pretty new at the PC building process, so I really only know to look at cores and frequency..

IPC or Instructions per Clock is what makes a chip more powerful and better.

It's the number of instructions that can be executed each clock cycle on the chip, so think of it like this. If I can run really fast but can only do 1 thing each time I go around the racetrack but my buddy runs a little slower but can do 3 things per cycle, he'll be more efficient. Obviously there is more to it than that but just the easiest way I can think of to explain it.

[cj09beira]

1 minute ago, jaysangwan32 said:

What specifically makes the G4560 more powerful?

Sorry I'm pretty new at the PC building process, so I really only know to look at cores and frequency..

right now with ryzen vs intel both have similar number of instructions per clock, and those older cpus had much lower levels of instructions per clock

[vanished]

Because FX has like half the IPC of anything modern, so you have to divide that 3.6 GHz by about 2 to get a comparable figure

[jaysangwan32]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

IPC or Instructions per Clock is what makes a chip more powerful and better.

It's the number of instructions that can be executed each clock cycle on the chip, so think of it like this. If I can run really fast but can only do 1 thing each time I go around the racetrack but my buddy runs a little slower but can do 3 things per cycle, he'll be more efficient. Obviously there is more to it than that but just the easiest way I can think of to explain it.

Ohh thank you for the simple explanation makes a ton of sense now!

[pyrojoe34]

As someone who owns two computers using FX chips: They're terrible at single threaded operations and their multi-threaded scaling is also bad. I have an 8 year old laptop with a dual core CPU that has a better single core Cinebench score than an OCed FX CPU.

 

Just don't bother with them, trust me.

[D13H4RD]

They're old and the FX chips have relatively poor IPC in comparison to its Intel rivals.

 

That's why IPC was a critical point of discussion with the release of Ryzen.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, jaysangwan32 said:

Ohh thank you for the simple explanation makes a ton of sense now!

As for your original question. If you can get the R3 1200 + B350 motherboard for about the same price as a G4560 and B250 board, I would pick the Ryzen 1200 chip and board. You can overclock it to get more life out of it down the road and the stock cooler is pretty good as well.

[jaysangwan32]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

As for your original question. If you can get the R3 1200 + B350 motherboard for about the same price as a G4560 and B250 board, I would pick the Ryzen 1200 chip and board. You can overclock it to get more life out of it down the road and the stock cooler is pretty good as well.

Yeah I've been researching both significantly and I'll probably advise he go with the 1200, even if its slightly more.

RIP Kaby Lake so it'd be nice if he can get an upgrade path and not have to invest in an aftermarket cooler.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[Imbellis]

11 minutes ago, jaysangwan32 said:

Hey guys!

So I've been helping a friend plan a budget build and have been comparing a slew of various CPUs. The top 2 CPUs I was looking at were the R3 1200 and the G4560.

However, recently I've noticed an older AMD FX series of CPUs. Why aren't these CPUs discussed as much compared to Ryzen. Looking at a 3.5ghz 6 core processor for $80 (FX-8300) and a 4.7 ghz 8 core processor for only $120 (FX-9590) seems fairly promising.

Why aren't these chips used more often? Would an FX chip be better for a budget CPU, since I can get more physical cores and higher frequencies for the same price or cheaper?

Thanks for the help!

From my personal use, I can tell you two things. 1) Clock speeds alone aren't an accurate representation of speed. The jump I had from a 6350 to a Ryzen 1600  is insane. 2) They are known for creating quite a lot of heat and being power hogs.

[Damascus]

3 minutes ago, jaysangwan32 said:

Yeah I've been researching both significantly and I'll probably advise he go with the 1200, even if its slightly more.

RIP Kaby Lake so it'd be nice if he can get an upgrade path and not have to invest in an aftermarket cooler.

Thanks for the suggestion!

What is the budget? If you were considering an aftermarket cooler not getting it may put you in r5 1400 range.

[jaysangwan32]

7 minutes ago, Damascus said:

What is the budget? If you were considering an aftermarket cooler not getting it may put you in r5 1400 range.

600-650ish including a monitor. Unfortunately no room for a 1400.

Thank you for the suggestion though!

[Sauron]

Well, as other said they are an older version which is inferior to ryzen in pretty much every way. While they offered some decent value for certain workloads, in most things they fell behind since they relied too much on taking advantage of all their cores. They were also less power efficient than intel's offerings. It's not that there's anything "wrong" with them, they just weren't very good compared to the competition. They can still be worth buying in certain niche scenarios since their price has dropped dramatically since ryzen's launch. In most cases a ryzen 3 is just better though.

[KenjiUmino]

26 minutes ago, jaysangwan32 said:

Why aren't these chips used more often? Would an FX chip be better for a budget CPU, since I can get more physical cores and higher frequencies for the same price or cheaper?

 

[DannyRyu]

Like everyone is saying the IPC is terrible on it, Abysmal.

If you are wondering why it's because they are only using 1 FPU per 2 cores

[jaysangwan32]

5 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

 

Definitely will check out.

Thank you for the link!

[Mira Yurizaki]

Part of the reason why Bulldozer wasn't really as great as Sandy Bridge at the time was:

• Bulldozer relied too much on a deep instruction pipeline. This means there were more stages to get one instruction out the door. While it's hard to say how many clock cycles each stage would take on Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge, it basically meant that if the branch prediction was wrong (and it can be), then there was a longer delay in getting instructions flowing again vs. Sandy Bridge.
• Bulldozer had less execution resources per core than K-10. Sharing the FPU aside (since a lot of tasks most people do usually don't touch the FPU), each core had only two execution units compared to three on K-10. This is why in some tests, Bulldozer had worse performance than a similarly clocked Phenom II chip.

I think it would've been better if AMD didn't pursue a deep pipeline. Because every time someone pursues that (well, there's only really one other time I can remember that someone did), it doesn't end well.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Part of the reason why Bulldozer wasn't really as great as Sandy Bridge at the time was:

• Bulldozer relied too much on a deep instruction pipeline. This means there were more stages to get one instruction out the door. While it's hard to say how many clock cycles each stage would take on Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge, it basically meant that if the branch prediction was wrong (and it can be), then there was a longer delay in getting instructions flowing again vs. Sandy Bridge.
• Bulldozer had less execution resources per core than K-10. Sharing the FPU aside (since a lot of tasks most people do usually don't touch the FPU), each core had only two execution units compared to three on K-10. This is why in some tests, Bulldozer had worse performance than a similarly clocked Phenom II chip.

I think it would've been better if AMD didn't pursue a deep pipeline. Because every time someone pursues that (well, there's only really one other time I can remember that someone did), it doesn't end well.

I still wonder why they didn't just die shrink the Phenom IIs if the alternative was bulldozer. Even if it was complicated it couldn't have been worse than designing a brand new architecture.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

I still wonder why they didn't just die shrink the Phenom IIs if the alternative was bulldozer. Even if it was complicated it couldn't have been worse than designing a brand new architecture.

I thought AMD's goals were noble to some extent.  They just made a bunch of boneheaded decisions getting there.

 

But in retrospect, most of them (aside from the ones that were historically not a good idea) were probably boneheaded.

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I thought AMD's goals were noble to some extent.  They just made a bunch of boneheaded decisions getting there.

 

But in retrospect, most of them (aside from the ones that were historically not a good idea) were probably boneheaded.

At least now they know. As long as you learn from your mistakes they aren't really as bad.