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AMD 4x4 Named Quad FX

2 points:

I heard that the 4x4 would only be supported fully my the Vista Ultimate version, and that the Home Premium (most people's choice) will not support the architecture.

Also, I believe AMD are not trying to 'distance' themselves entirely from Nvidia, else Intel will gain a faux partnership.
 
All these comments about it being "a disappointment", "a stop-gap" etc....

what exactly were you expecting when AMD announced that they would be sticking two socket on 1 board to make a quad core machine?

Did any one expect that 2 X2s (each one slower than a C2D at a lower speed) would suddenly become faster than a Kentsfield (2 C2Ds on the same die)??
It was pretty obvious it was gonna be:
1) Hot
2) A large, cramped board
3) Expensive (though comparably priced to a Kentsfield and high end 680i mobo)
4) Slower than a comparative Kentsfield at most tasks

This sort of setup is only really going to get exciting when K8L quad cores come out.... then this thing is gonna FLY. However, for that, may as well wait for a mobo that supports HT3.0 (assuming this one doesn't, though it might) so you can get the extra throughput.
 
To my mind its still innovation, even if it is costly and old tech (which it is undoubtedly)

no benefit at all until the quad core amd chips come out and even then its only going to make it more expensive

files it under "nice try" ....hopefull of better mobo design before K8L comes out
 
Huge review on Anandtech.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=2879&p=1

The main point of it all.


Final Words

AMD is going to have a very tough sell with Quad FX; although the CPUs are priced competitively, if the ASUS L1N64-SLI WS ends up just shy of the $400 mark it's a platform that is simply too expensive at no benefit to the end user. When only running one or two CPU intensive threads, Quad FX ends up being slower than an identically clocked dual core system, and when running more threads it's no faster than Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX6700. But it's more expensive than the alternatives and consumes as much power as both, combined.
There is the upgrade path argument, that eventually you will be able to put a total of eight cores in this Quad FX platform, but we can't help but wonder if the market for someone who wants a non-workstation 8-core setup for desktop use is a very small one. Although to AMD's credit we were able to create a scenario where even four cores won't cut it, making a case for the need for 8-core setups in the future. But the promise of eight cores in the future doesn't do a great job of justifying the Quad FX purchase today.
For those users who won't migrate to eight cores, once AMD's new micro-architecture debuts next year with native quad-core support, this expensive Quad FX platform will be notably slower than cheaper single socket systems. Quad FX is simply a very niche product, and in the era of power efficiency and performance per watt, AMD has released the proverbial SUV of high end desktops.
AMD hopes to sell more Quad FX processors than any FX processor in the past, which to us means that either AMD sees much more opportunity in this platform than we do, or that the previous FX processors simply didn't sell very well. Either way you slice it, there's only one AMD CPU we're really interested in and we won't get it until the middle of next year. Luckily for AMD, Intel doesn't appear to be doing anything huge between now and then either, so it looks like the CPU wars will cool down for a while after a heated few months.
Prepare to revisit this discussion in less than a year's time, and next time AMD will hopefully be much better prepared, armed with a new architecture and a cooler, smaller 65nm process. Until then, there's always Quad FX but you're better off with Kentsfield.

Note the last sentence!
 
A pointless creation - the AMD director responsible for signing off on this project should be shown the door. They shouldn't have spent a single dollar on this joke.

AMD should just slash the price on their existing range, accept temporary defeat in the mid to high end and just concentrate on making the new micro architecture as good and soon as it can be.
 
only thing this has over workstation boards is it wont require registered ram from what i heard. apart from that it seems similar to my 2915 with a god awful layout
 
I felt the same with the launch of Intels quad core cpu as well, although most liked it...

Its weird since AMD or rumour was suggesting there Quadcore would be cheaper/better then Intels choice, obviously not...

For now id still say its better just to get an E6600, and if anything overclock it;)

Guess its just a question of waiting for games/software to catch up but considering dual cores only just now catching on with better support and more game engines supporting it, its still gonna be a bit far off not unless Alan wake is due out 2007 or Crysis supports multiple Cores big time!
 
yeah im confused as well, why they going on about more cores when games and most other applications are still single threaded?! :confused:
 
Gashman said:
yeah im confused as well, why they going on about more cores when games and most other applications are still single threaded?! :confused:
Click to expand...

Guess its just some hardcore Video Editiors/Encoders out there..... or people that like to run benchmarks a lot;)

To me the PCs still somewhat limiting its not like u can copy large files over to other partitions/hdds and still burn a DVD data or film disc and play BF2142 at the same time....

For majority of us a 200 quid E6600 will be just as fast as these Quad cores even if your doing the basic mutli-tasking I reckon so theres no point.
 
indeed, i think faster hard disks would be a good thing as well, since the read time is a big slowdown factor of computers, all good if you processor can process N amount of things a second if you can't get the things to process :p glad to see raptors with bigger capacity arriving, but the power consumption and price make them pointless, i think more development needs done on that RAM storage thing to be honest, can't remember what it was called, OCUK stocked one made by gigabyte i think
 
Yeap that solid state memory... hope it goes ahead big time...we need Vista and games to access in 2-3 seconds and to take the loading times out of the equation ;)
 
yeah it was gigabyte I-ram, good theory but it was crippled by slow SATA interfaces (slow compaired to RAM bandwidth) and small storage space, someone needs to produce cheap 5Gb memory dimms soon and it would be worth it, but until then were stuck with the good but sometimes unreliable hard disk :( what i don't understand is, i have in my digital camera a 2Gb corsair SD card, 2Gb on something not much bigger than my thumb nail, why doesn't someone just make a bank of them (40 or something) and stick them in a computer, solid state storage with large capacity, can't be bad surely? :confused:
 
Gashman said:
yeah it was gigabyte I-ram, good theory but it was crippled by slow SATA interfaces (slow compaired to RAM bandwidth) and small storage space, someone needs to produce cheap 5Gb memory dimms soon and it would be worth it, but until then were stuck with the good but sometimes unreliable hard disk :( what i don't understand is, i have in my digital camera a 2Gb corsair SD card, 2Gb on something not much bigger than my thumb nail, why doesn't someone just make a bank of them (40 or something) and stick them in a computer, solid state storage with large capacity, can't be bad surely? :confused:
Click to expand...


Its because SD cards (if Im thinking of the right technology) and similar digi camera cards have only a pretty limited read & write life time (hundreds of thousands of times/ cycles) . Now this sounds huge until you factor in how RAM works and how windows uses it and then this becomes impractical and expensive to replace (ie caching , temp files and constant background activity would use up these cycles pretty quickly)- therefore uneconomical

There are new cards coming out that are similar that use more advanced versions with millions and billions of read/write cycles but obviously being a new tech its going to be costly to start with (in relative terms)

I am pretty sure this is correct, however if anyone wants to correct me or expand on the details please do.
 
yeah i believe thats correct, plus it generally has a slower access than RAM as well, i think solid state storage will return, i always wanted a TV that had SD card slot so you could record programs and movies onto them :p
 
Gashman said:
yeah im confused as well, why they going on about more cores when games and most other applications are still single threaded?! :confused:
Click to expand...

Because increasing clock speeds has proven too difficult for both Intel and AMD, so the only ways to increase performance are:

1) Shorten pipeline length
2) More cores on a CPU die

Either way will get more work done per second
 
mrthingyx said:
Because increasing clock speeds has proven too difficult for both Intel and AMD, so the only ways to increase performance are:

1) Shorten pipeline length
2) More cores on a CPU die

Either way will get more work done per second
Click to expand...

yeah but its pointless to make CPUs with four or so cores, since practically no applications will use them, so there making CPUs for a market that doesn't exist, and the even more hilarious thing, people are buying them :confused:
 
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