It has a low power consumption compared to other Vishera chips

Dec 27, 2012 07:47 GMT  ·  By

The latest FX central processing unit series from Advanced Micro Devices is welcoming its newest member, one that has actually been known since last month (November 2012), but has only now reached the market. The new processor is a curious thing. Weaker than some of its peers, it still has a fairly high price, as high as the one belonging to the FX-8350.

Granted, the latter actually sells for more money in most cases, but there is at least one retailer that offers it for just $190 / 190 Euro.

Given that the FX-8350 holds the overclocking record for Vishera CPUs, it means a lot that the FX-8300, which is weaker than not just that chip but also the FX-8320, sells for the same amount.

The TDP (Thermal Design Power) is the advantage here. Whereas the FX-8320 and FX-8350 use 125W, the FX-8300 is a 95W processor.

As for the actual specifications, the clock frequency is of 3.30 GHz, or 3.6 GHz when Turbo Core technology activates (dynamic overclocking based on need).

The eight cores are spread across four Piledriver modules and use 2 MB L2 cache per module (8 MB total), plus 8 MB L3 cache memory.

It is interesting to note that these performance numbers are slightly different from the ones we reported back in early November.

Back then, rumor had it that the FX-8300 was a 3.2 / 3.6 GHz unit set to ship for $164 / 164 Euro.

Of course, this newer information is hardly official. Expreview is the source, so some facts may have been gotten wrong, however unlikely.

If nothing else, people from around the world that intend to build themselves, or their acquaintances, a new personal computer can now set up a rig with a relatively high performance but not too high energy use. The price might become a real issue though. Sure, the FX-8350 uses more power, but its clock speeds of 4.0 GHz / 4.2 GHz easily offset that.