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The first benchmark below is possibly one of the most telling.
Taking the eight-cores of multi-threading out of the picture you can see how the individual cores actually stack up. Running in single-threaded mode shows the FX-8150 cores actually running slower than the hexcore Phenom II it's replacing.
With the multi-threaded benchmarks though the FX-8150 starts to look more interesting. However the gaming benchmarks tell a worrying story.
When it's just relying on the GPU the story is much the same across the four CPUs we tested. DiRT 3 is shown here, but in Just Cause 2 and World in Conflict all four processors spat out roughly the same performance figures at the top resolutions.
Take the GPU out of the equation and the Sandy Bridge chips stretch out ahead.
Things aren't too pretty in terms of multi-GPU performance either.
In overclocking terms though the FX-8150 is a success. Stably running at over 4.7GHz is impressive and really pushes it ahead of the Core i5 2500K.
If the chip had been released at the 4GHz it can easily manage we might've been looking at a higher score...
Single-threaded performance
Multi-threaded performance
CPU gaming performance
High-end gaming performance
Multi-GPU performance
Overclocking performance
Platform power draw
