The first line of the AMD FX was launched in late 2011. Back in the day I bought the FX 8120 that ran happy (albeit a bit tweaked to reduce power consumption). AMD struggled to keep up with the Intel Core CPU's of that time. However, they did improve the FX-line by introducing the 'Vishera'-core that had a better IPC and featured L3-cache. Unfortunately it wasn't enough to claim the performance crown.

Nevertheless I still think the AMD FX is an interesting bit of technology and the behemoth, the FX 9590, is no exception. The FX 9590 is the fastest AMD FX ever produced. It runs at a base clock of 4.7GHz and can boost up to a magical 5.0GHz at a cost of 220W TDP. Good cooling and a strong power-supply is necessary.

Another interesting thing about the AMD FX is it's overclock potential. Before the AMD FX was launched, the highest clock frequencies were obtained using Intel's 65nm 'Cedar Mill' cores (usually around 8GHz with the highest overclocks). This list is now dominated by the AMD FX with a CPU reaching 8722MHz . I included a screenshot of June 15, 2022 that shows the top 20 highest clock frequencies.

I still have the AMD FX 9590 in service as secondary PC for an occasional multiplayer game. > Read more