AMD FX-8350 8-Core Black Edition Processor Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The key to AMD processors is the performance to price ratio. I have heard it said on countless occasions that you get 80% of the performance for 60% of the price. Overall I think that statement holds pretty close to accurate today. If we were to solely look at gaming performance, the AMD FX-8350 was easily able to hold its own against the Intel Core i7 3770K. As a whole package though, the AMD FX-8350 did come up a little short in a few areas. One thing that we have to keep in mind, the AMD FX-8350 is prices ~$120 less than the 3770K and isn’t necessarily aimed at taking down the 3770K, but more targeted at the Core i5 3570K which can be found priced at $219.99.

Our gaming performance with the AMD FX-8350 definitely saw an improvement over the AMD FX-8150. Two of our game benchmarks don’t benefit from the faster processors today. Whether we were running the 4GHz AMD FX-8350 octo-core processor or the 3.0GHz quad-core A8-3870K APU there was virtually no difference in Battlefield 3 or Aliens Vs. Predator. Our other two games, Borderlands 2 and DiRT 3 were both able to benefit from the faster processors. Most of the differences were at 1280×1024 due to the fact that we were becoming GPU limited by our AMD Radeon HD 7950 at higher resolutions. Though at 1280×1024 we were seeing performance gains just over 5% in both games. The FX-8350 also gave us some significant gains in 3DMark 11.

The overall score in the performance preset jumped to P7373 compared to P7089 with the FX-8150. The only difference in the sub-scores was the Physics score, the FX-8350 physics score was 7325 while the FX-8150 was nearly 900 points lower at 6434.

The AMD FX-8350 was a breeze to overclock, granted it has become a whole different beast over the years. Simply add a little voltage here and there, increase either the Bclk or the multiplier and see how far it can go. Today we stuck to increasing the multiplier and left the Bclk alone, we were able to bring the FX-8350 to a rock solid 4.9GHz without breaking a sweat. No doubt the FX-8350 has more to give, and we are going to continue playing with it to see just how far we can push it

Depending on what you are looking for in a processor can determine if the FX-8350 processor is right for you. If you are looking for the most performance period, perhaps the FX-8350 octo-core processor isn’t right for you. If you are looking for the most performance for your dollar, I think the AMD FX-8350 is likely to be your best bet in that department. It’s also going to come down to what you are going to be doing with your machine. If you are looking to put together a gaming rig, you really wont be able to tell a difference between a processor like the Intel Core i7 3770K which retails for $314.99, and the AMD FX-8350 which is coming to the party at only $195. Personally I would put the extra $120 towards a SSD, or if that’s already in the pipeline I would get a larger SSD. If you’re building a system to do heavy number crunching, the numbers speak for themselves.

The AMD FX series isn’t exactly a Viking when it comes to number crunching. Running Super Pi, the Intel Core i7 3770K was complete in ~43% of the time it took the FX-8350 to complete the 1m benchmark. The 32m benchmark was completed 840.904 seconds faster by the Intel system. That’s more than 14 minutes faster. As I said, it really does come down to what you are looking for the system to do. I would have no problem recommending the FX-8350 to you, it’s a very solid processor. Plus as we saw earlier it has some great overclocking potential! First time out we were able to hit 4.9GHz, in the near future I may break out my redneck chilled water set-up and see what we can do with the AMD FX-8350.

Despite being the flagship processor, the AMD FX-8350 doesn’t carry a hefty price tag like some other flagship processors that cost over a grand. The FX-8350 carries a suggested retail price of only $195.00. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it available for ~$185 once it hits the streets though, but don’t quote me on that. If you like to push your processor to the max, there’s always the possibility that something will go wrong. If it happens to be the AMD FX-8350, or any of the AMD Processors in a Box (PIB) AMD backs them with a 3 year warranty.

Legit Bottom Line: The AMD FX-8350 has a number of strong points that make it a great choice for your computer. If you’re looking to upgrade from an older system you really can’t beat the price to performance ratio offered with an eight core 4GHz processor processor for only $195!