CPU Testing Methodology

While the new AMD FX-8370 and FX-8370E processors compete most closely in price with the i5-4570, the closest competing processor that I had on hand for these tests was the i5-4670. The i5-4670 currently costs $219, about $20 more than the FX-8370 and FX-8370E. Keeping that in mind, I think the benchmarks do a good job of showing how the new AMD FX chips stack up against the competition in the all-important price to performance ratio.

In addition to the results for the Intel i5-4670 processor, I also included scores for the Steamroller based Kaveri A10-7850K APU, which I found to be an excellent value earlier this year. In fact, I liked how the Kaveri APUs stacked up enough to consider writing off the FX series completely. I think I’ll wait to pass judgement, however, until we see something other than a simple CPU refresh. I also included scores for the AMD FX-9590; the top end of the FX series.

The selection of benchmarks is a little limited for a couple of reasons. The first is that I had only 3 days to test the new AMD FX processors, and those days happened to fall over Labor Day weekend 2014. The second is that AMD spent a lot of time in their press release touting the gaming capabilities of the FX series of processors when paired with high-end AMD R9 series graphics cards. Well no duh. Nearly any processor, when paired with an R9 series graphics card, is going to be able to pull off great scores in gaming benchmarks. Since the FX processors don’t have an on-die graphics solution, I see no particular reason to include DX11 synthetic benchmarks or actual game benchmarks in the review.

FM2+ Test System

• Motherboards: ASUS A88X Pro
• Processor: AMD A10-7850K
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Intel Test System

• Motherboard: Biostar HiFi Z87W
• Processor: Intel Core i5-4670
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

AMD 990FX Test System

• Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Killer
• Processors: AMD FX-8370; AMD FX-8370E; AMD FX-9590
• System Memory: 8GB AMD Radeon DDR3 2400MHz
• Disk Drive: Seagate 1TB SSHD ST1000LM014
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W 80-Plus Certified
• Video Card: XFX R9-280X
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Compute Benchmarks

• AIDA 64
• SiSoftware Sandra 2014
• Cinebench R15