AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 8-core, worth it?

Question

The majority of reviews and posts I see referring to the zambezi say it rocks and do so hard. However, I'm seeing isolated posts of problems w/ compatibility with hardware and some older games... and even some new ones. The purpose of the computer in question, that is soon to be ordered, is for gaming. I've heard issues with the CPU and gigabyte motherboards (luckily i picked an ASUS). I've also heard that random games don't work very well on it, even cause BSODs, such as Shogun 2, and certain other games, particularly some older games. This is a problem seeing as the intended user plays Sims 3 (though she does also intend to play some games that are coming out). I play shogun 2 on my alienware laptop and would like to play with her anyways so I'd like to know if theres some truth to this. Finally, i've heard that the CPU is ahead of its time and is currently held back by Win7 and its potential will be unlocked with win8 which is totally fine so long as it can still faceroll games coming out until then.

Can anyone clarify some of these issues?

Answer 1

The issues you describe could result from any number of issues. In the majority of cases (no pun intended, I assure you), you will find that people reporting problems are people who built their own machines. It is likely that they might have small issues anywhere - motherboard, RAM being the correct kind, RAM or CPU being seated improperly, OS install, OS patch level, drivers up-to-date, graphics card issues, game patches, etc etc etc.

You need to find someone reputable - such as Tech Report, Anandtech etc. - who run scientific tests on the CPU to isolate it and determine that it indeed is the cause. Otherwise it is foolish to suggest the problem is the CPU itself. Any CPU - Intel or AMD - suffers similar issues if installed in a bad machine / OS environment.