DETAILS
• Manufacturer. AMD
• Requirements: AM3+ motherboard, DDR3 RAM, 850W minimum PSU
The top-end FX processor from the Piledrive micro architecture range is the FX-9590. Although there’s no advancement in the manufacturing process (it’s still at 32nm with the same Vishera core), AMD has upped the clock frequencies significantly in the hope of attracting performance enthusiasts to its FX-range.
The FX-9590 has a base clock speed of 4.7GHz, with a turbo clock speed of 5GHz. It has eight cores, eight threads and 8MB L2 and L3 cache. The TDP is the same 220W as the FX-9370 we’ve looked at, as are nearly every other aspect of the processor – minus the higher clock speeds, of course.
Sadly, in terms of overclocking, the FX-9590 doesn’t fare quite as well as the other FX processors we’ve looked at. The average air cooled overclock speed appears to be 5.07GHz, while the liquid-cooled overclocked speed was only slightly higher at 5.08GHz. We didn’t get anywhere near those speeds, though, even a slight overclock resulted in an unstable system. So we left the CPU running with its default 4.7/5GHZ speeds, which are still quite impressive.
Benchmarking the world’s first 5GHz CPU was always going to be interesting. The single-core Cinebench R15 score came back at 110, and the multi-core score was an equally huge 735. Meanwhile, the PassMark version 8 overall score of 10,515 and single-core score of 1,730 were quite jaw-dropping, so the highest we have in the entire guide.
Those scores aren’t too far off that of the Intel i7-6700K, a processor. On the negative side, though, the i7-6700K is clocked at 4GHz and is only a quad-core compared to the FX-9590’s eight cores. Overall, the i7-6700K is a better performing processor, but AMD isn’t too far behind even with its older technology.
Power consumption is high, as it was with the FX-9370, but those who are prepared for such a CPU will undoubtedly have something in place to cater for such a power-hungry CPU and other components.
It’s a performance CPU, so it’s not something that the average consumer would consider. But if we’re being honest, it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to the performance enthusiast. As we’ve already pointed out, the i7-6700K is a better performer, and it doesn’t require anywhere near as much power – just 91W. Also, there’s very little room for overclocking with the FX-9590, unless you have access to something like liquid nitrogen and can tune it up to 6GHz or some other semi-mythical clock speed.
The AMD FX-9590 costs in the region and is the more expensive of the FX processor line-up. But who’ll go for it over an equally priced Intel CPU is debatable.