AMD Centurion FX-9590 5 GHz Processor Gets Previewed – Comes Close to Core i7-4770K

AMD released their FX-9590 and FX-9370 processors at E3 2013 which brought 5 GHz native clock speeds to consumers for the very first time. The new AMD FX 5 GHz processors are supposed to be limited edition and would only be available through OEM PCs manufacturer’s.

AMD Centurion FX-9590 Processor Gets Previewed

VR-Zone forum member “MacClipper” acquired a retail sample of the FX-9590 and provided a brief preview of the 5 GHz beast from AMD. But before we get into the benchmarks, we would like to tell our readers a bit of the details about the FX-9590 itself. The processor is based off the same 32nm HKG process used on Piledriver and Bulldozer. It features 8 cores and 8 threads and features 8 MB of cache. Specifically, the CPU doesn’t comes with a 5 GHz clock speed but its the Turbo core 3.0 technology that pushes its clocks higher from the base clock of 4.7 GHz. Retail samples have been appearing on several retail sites since the launch of the new lineup and we are estimating a price range of the processor around the $800 mark which is around the same as the Core i7-3960X.

There are some intresting details regarding the FX-9590 provided by the user, the chip runs at idle on 1.4GHz at 0.875V while at 5 GHz turbo clock speed, it pushes to an 1.513V. This could be quiet high for some cases and would require heavy cooling and power supply requirements for usage. Only a limited amount of high-end AM3+ motherboards would be able to support the 5 GHz lineup such as the GA-990FX-UD7 from Gigabyte or the ASUS Crosshair V Formula. The processor features the same size and die as the older FX-8350 and the only difference between the two chips is that the 5 GHz chip is highly binned and comes with higher clock speeds. The user tested it with the ASRock 990FX Extreme9 motherboard which is considered as the flagship AM3+ motherboard in their lineup.

NOTE: The user had disabled AMD’s Turbo Core 3.0 technology to enable 5 GHz clock speed for all eight cores. This would result in an enormous boost over the stock FX-9590 performance.

The performance of the chip came out close to the Core i7-4770K at stock clocks. It would be nice to see how the processor compares to the Core i7-3960X since both processors fall within the same price range but its obvious to see that AMD’s has not only upped the core count of their CPUs but also the clock speed. FX-8350 itself runs at an impressive 4.2 GHz clock which is impressive in itself. Now only if the IPC and compute side of performance was as great or atleast par on Intel’s offerings. Hopefully, the upcoming Steamroller and Excavator core architecture’s would change that and bring AMD back in the game. You can check out the performance results below:

AMD FX-9590 Performance:

CineBench R11.5 – 8.62 Points
WinRAR – 9249 KB/s
7-ZIP – 28860 MIPS
Fritz Chess – 15678 Kilonodes/S
3DMark Vantage – 27127 KB/s
3DMark 11 – 8529 Physics Score
3DMark FireStrike – 9571 Physics Score
x264 HD – 29
AIDA64 – 26751/17515/22754 MB/s (58.3 ns)

	AMD FX-9590	AMD FX-9370	AMD FX-8350
Architecture	Piledriver	Piledriver	Piledriver
Family	Vishera	Vishera	Vishera
Manufacture	32 nm SOI HKMG	32 nm SOI HKMG	32 nm SOI HKMG
Cores	8 pcs. (4 pcs. Modules)	8 pcs. (4 pcs. Modules)	8 pcs. (4 pcs. Modules)
CPU Clock Base	4.7 GHz	4.4 Ghz	4.0 GHz
CPU Turbo Core	5.0 GHz	4.7 GHz	4.2 GHz
L2 cache	4 x 2 MB	4 x 2 MB	4 x 2 MB
L3 cache	8 MB	8 MB	8 MB
Max. DDR3	1866 MHz	1866 MHz	1866 MHz
TDP	220 W	220 W	125 W
Base	AM3 +	AM3 +	AM3 +