Value Award
AMD FX 8350 RRP: $229.99 | Website: www.amd.com
Test Machine ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z G.Skill F3 Trident 2,666MHz CL11 MSI NGTX680 Lightning Cooler Master M2 Silent Pro 1500W PSU Windows XP SP3/Windows 7 64-Bit SP1
A
MD seems to be garnering a reputation for recovering well from mistakes. One need only look at Barcelona, Llano, and
26 The OverClocker Issue 22 | 2012
Bulldozer to see that each of those have been promptly succeeded by better versions after their dubious first showing. In some ways, a one step back and two steps forward rhythm. With the FX 8350 we find ourselves at a familiar place then. Looking at a product line that was initially disappointing but has, with a few changes, managed to salvage the brand and in particular the FX brand. There’s truly no point in going back, further dissecting the performance of the FX 8150 or rather the lack there off. That boat sailed and before us we find, for lack of a better word – a “charming” CPU. We say
so because it isn’t the fastest at anything we care about, but it’s decent enough at most things we are concerned with that it makes for a worthwhile purchase. It’s not a perfect CPU by any measure, but had AMD released this instead of Zambezi, we can’t help but think things would have been a different right now for the company, even a little. Right then on to the performance. The 8350 as you know comes in at a blistering 4GHz. Once again a milestone for AMD, claiming the highest clocked retail x86 CPU in history for the second time. We’d generally not care about such, especially with