you don't need to own the FX to get an idea of how it performs, there are hundreds of different tests available it's fast for MT (really fast for the money, core i7 level in many cases), IPC is lower but with high clock it's decent/good for ST (core i3 level in many cases), and the power usage is high compared to Intel, did I get something wrong?
I don't see people calling "crap and slow" here, just the "hater" guy...
it's a solid CPU depending on your use sure, as any other CPU can be, that's why relatively small differences or disadvantaged gain a lot of weight in these discussions,
I always considered a stable OC something which would have no issues with running something like linx for an hour, Prime 95 for multiple hours...
but I'm sure for some it's enough to run a game stable,
Well stable and "stable" are two different things . When you need your PC to do some serious work with some sensitive data(read valuable) I'd want to be 100% sure my OC is stable, for real. It's difficult thing to do since there is no real test to perform in order to be so sure. But a combination of several stress tests along with normal usage (day to day tasks) should be fairly close I suppose.
I like my FX-8350. It is nowhere near the slow-performing fail-train that it gets made out to be in enthusiast discussions where second-fastest in benchmarks means being dead-last in perception.
Folks tend to get a little too binary in their categorization and characterization IMO. And I include myself in that generalization.
Until I had one to play with first-hand, I too had this impression that not only would a 4GHz bulldozer/piledriver consume 600W but it would also perform like an Atom processor.
But the performance gap just isn't that wide, and the power usage situation (once you factor in the power used by the entire platform, LCD included) just isn't that stark in contrast between the two.
If you game, you are going to be able to game regardless whether you bought a 2500k/3570k or an FX-8150/8350.
If you encode/transcode, you are going to be able to encode/transcode regardless whether you bought a 2500k/3570k or an FX-8150/8350.
One is better suited for a given application than the other, but neither processor type is so unbalanced as to be unusable or woefully underpowered as to prevent the user from getting done whatever task they are attempting.
I'm not just saying that to be a fence-sitter either, I'm using my 4GHz FX-8350 right after spending months using my 3770k @ 4.8GHz, which came after using my 2600k @ 5GHz and I do not personally notice anything being slower (nor notably faster) with the FX-8350 processor.
The power bill has not changed, the time for jobs to get done is roughly the same either way - if one is faster or slower than the other then it is all within my ability to notice or care.
I think as enthusiasts we get wrapped up, sometimes, in driving for the pinnacle of optimization when it comes to performance/dollar or performance/watt. Second best then becomes dead-last even though in reality second-best is virtually indistinguishable from "
the best" in many usage scenarios.
It is a very "first world problem" type situation and debate in many of these arguments IMO.
IDC: Having some minor eye surgery today so I'll try to get my BIOS specs for my 8350 to you by Friday.
Yikes, hope it goes well for you and absolutely no rush on my account. I won't be back home until Friday anyway and even then I've got a bevy of other tests queued up to run through in the meantime anyways.