Benchmark Results: PCMark 7
I’m starting off with the synthetic results because I like to see how hardware measures up in tightly-controlled metrics. PCMark 7 doesn’t necessarily isolate specific capabilities of any given platform because it’s composed of Windows 7-based components.
The suite does utilize as many cores as you can throw at it, though (despite reports to the contrary). With that said, the FX-8150 is only very narrowly able to outpace the Phenom II X4 980—a quad-core 3.7 GHz processor. Both the Core i5-2500K and i7-2600K are notably faster in PCMark 7’s Overall Suite score.
FX’s worst finish is in the Entertainment suite, which is heavy on graphics, video playback/transcoding, and storage. Finishing behind AMD’s previous flagship quad- and hexa-core models doesn’t bode well. Fortunately, the rest of the results show Zambezi at least matching those older chips.
There are at least a couple of tests, however, where the Zambezi-based FX CPU loses out to the once-popular Core i7-920 running at its default 2.66 GHz. And the $245 processor falls behind the $220 Core i5-2500K and $315 Core i7-2600K in every discipline.
