AMD's Bulldozer Architecture: Overclocking Efficiency Explored

12:00 AM - December 26, 2011 by Manuel Masiero, Achim Roos Table of contents 1. Overclocking And Undervolting AMD's FX Family 2. The Bulldozer Platform: Using FX-8150 To Test 3. Water Cooling Versus Two Air Coolers 4. Clock Frequency: 3.6 GHz, Multiplier: 18x, CPU Voltage: 1.332 V 5. Clock Frequency: 3.8 GHz, Multiplier: 19x, CPU Voltage: 1.352 V 6. Clock Frequency: 4.0 GHz, Multiplier: 20x, CPU Voltage: 1.38 V 7. Clock Frequency: 4.5 GHz, Multiplier: 22.5x, CPU Voltage: 1.428 V 8. Clock Frequency: 4.6 GHz, Multiplier: 23x, CPU Voltage: 1.5 V 9. Clock Frequency: 3.6 GHz, Multiplier: 18x, CPU Voltage: 1.116 V 10. Test System, Benchmarks, And Settings 11. Benchmark Results: Archiving And Professional Applications 12. Benchmark Results: Matlab 13. Benchmark Results: Audio/Video 14. Benchmark Results: Energy Consumption (Idle/Load) 15. Single-Thread Efficiency Test 16. Multi-Threaded Efficiency Test 17. Combined Efficiency Test Results 18. Efficiency Score And Power Diagram 19. Overclocking And Efficiency Are Like Oil And Water With Bulldozer

AMD’s FX processor line-up was supposedly designed with efficiency in mind, according to AMD. We're putting this claim to the test, assessing the Bulldozer architecture at a number of different clock rates and comparing the results to Intel's CPUs.

AMD's new FX family was highly anticipated, but its performance simply underwhelmed us. Rather than leap-frogging Intel's mainstream CPUs, it only managed to (at best) match and (at worst) fall behind them. Of course, this is a result of a redesign from the ground-up, which involved certain decisions that affected performance, and others made with power efficiency in mind. In theory, the FX family should be more efficient than its predecessor thanks to AMD's decisions. And a 32 nm manufacturing node would have been thought to help, too.

Just how does the design fare with regard to power as you move frequency around? That's what we're aiming to find out.

There are seven models based on the Bulldozer architecture, presenting a range of clock rates and prices to the folks interesting in dropping one of these chips into a Socket AM3

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