HEXUS.articles :: AMD Quadfather - first part of an epic trilogy?

[Tarinder]

It's déjà vu all over again. Just as Intel beat AMD to dual-core by a month or so, now AMD's first taster of four-core desktop computing is about to arrive in the wake of Intel's. Except....

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7316

[kalniel]

The requirement for Vista Ultimate for licensing is hardly a set back though, given the group that this product is going to be aimed at

True quad-core for the masses will be able to be licensed under Vista Home, so it won't be an issue really

[chuckskull]

If you can afford 2 FX chips, 2 sets of RAM and 4 graphics cards, I don't think the vista price is going to deter you

What we're all wondering though.. does it beat core 2?

[[GSV]Trig]

typical, I move from S939 to S775 and then this bast comes out, lol oh well when i switch back to AMD at least my DDR2 can still be used

[[GSV]Trig]

Infact now I've read that it just looks like AMD are just saying "Yay look what we have" to distract from the fact Intel just kicked them around the playground a bit with Core2 Duo...
I mean, come on its not even Quad core is it, its just dual dual core CPU's which both companies have had around for a while...

[DragonStar]

If you can afford 2 FX chips, 2 sets of RAM and 4 graphics cards, I don't think the vista price is going to deter you

What we're all wondering though.. does it beat core 2?

I assume you mean the processors, they are going to be sold as one package, so thats not really the issue, however i agree, it certainly does look like its going to be expensive.. lol... so then Hexus... your gonna run a competition to win a complete system when it comes out right? (only way im gonna be able to get one, lol)

[b0redom]

I may be wrong, but these are still the same cores right? Just everso slightly higher clocked, and x2?

This being the case, for almost everyone, this will make no real world difference.

I guess having 4 video cards might mean you could play games at stupidly high resolutions, but then most of them aren't massivly threaded, and so won't take advantage of the extra cores.

Am I missing something?

Tom

[chuckskull]

I assume you mean the processors, they are going to be sold as one package, so thats not really the issue, however i agree, it certainly does look like its going to be expensive.. lol... so then Hexus... your gonna run a competition to win a complete system when it comes out right? (only way im gonna be able to get one, lol)

I assumed you'd buy them separetly, but either way it aint going to be cheap, by any stretch of the imagination.

[SpawnofSonic]

looks nice, but would be dead costly

[rjpearce]

Exciting times ahead! With all thoose components i'm suprised if there is space on the motherboard for anything else. Also i bet all that lot is going to be getting pretty hot.

[Octavean]

This should be called a 2x 2x not a 4x4

[Thorburn]

Some rather odd comments in the article if you ask me....

But it doesn't use NVIDIA's nForce Professional 3000-series chipset, instead calling on a variant of NVIDIA's consumer-oriented 600 series. This isn't such a new idea, as there are dual Opteron Socket 940 workstation boards on the market which use NVIDIA's nForce 4, such as MSI's K8N Master2-FAR. The 600-series chipset also means Quad FX can use regular DDR2 memory rather than registered ECC DIMMs, opening the platform up to mainstream high-performance DIMMs and overclocking.

Why would the chipset care what memory you are dropping into it? As you said there are nForce 4 based Opteron boards but they still require registered ECC DIMMs.
The memory controller is in the CPU and its this that has been tweaked to allow normal DDR2.

Since both nForce 680i SLI and 680a SLI use similar chipsets, there won't be much difference in motherboard pricing.

So the fact that it uses TWO 680a's won't make much difference at all then?
Additionally the PCB itself is significantly larger, hell its bigger than my old Asus PC-DL Dual Xeon board (so you'll need an EATX sized case as well) and are doubling up on power circuitry.
You've got an additional 400 pins, and thats per socket, so add another 800 traces on the motherboard, which is going to mean more layers.
This isn't a scaled up desktop board, its barely even a scaled down workstation board and I have a feeling it'll be priced accordingly.

AMD explained that the new Quad FX processors will be retailing in packages of matched pairs, the most expensive of which (the FX-74) will correspond in price to Intel's QX6700. So for around the same money you could either buy one Intel processor with four cores, or get two AMD ones with a pair of cores each.

I could be wrong here but my understanding was that this was for the equvilant clock speed.
The FX-70 (2 x 2.6GHz chips) is targetted at $999, same as the QX6700, but the FX-72 and FX-74 are set to be more expensive.

Still, you can't help feeling that Quad FX is a teaser for when AMD releases its true, 'native' quad-core part. Many of the features of this are now quite widely known - four cores, each with their own Level 1 and Level 2 cache but sharing 2MB of L3 between them. This will be based on the new K10 core

Native quad core chips will still be K8 based, they are a newer revision and have tweaks and enhancements, but as far as I understand they are not K10.

Interesting you didn't touch on the fact that the FX chips also have a TDP almost equal to the QX6700 EACH, so you are going to have to have a heftier power supply and twice the heat to disipate.

So what we have here is platform where:
The CPU's probably will cost the same, if not more
The motherboard will cost more
The case will cost more
The power supply will cost more
The cooling will cost more
Performance is unlikely to beat the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (We've all seen how in some applications its almost double the performance of an X6800, and that already leaves the FX-62 trailing, just look at the Valve particle demos)

No sorry I can't see it myself.

[James Morris]

Firstly, the 680i SLI is a two chip solution as well, as explained in the article - the SPP and the MCP. The 680a just has two chips similar to the 680i's MCP.

And the pricing quoted is straight from AMD - $999 for the FX-74, $799 for the FX-72, and £599 for the FX-70. That's for a pack of TWO processors.

Also, the controversy over a Intel's quad-core versus AMD just supplying two processors is missing the point somewhat. The QX6700 is a great product, but it is just two E6700 sitting side by side in the same packaging and sharing the same FSB. There really is very little difference between that and sticking the two processors in separate sockets.

Don't take the article as a celebration of Quad FX, though - we're reserving judgement until we've had a chance to fully test it. Watch this space for that. There is a set date when performance data about the platform can be published, and we're not going to contravene that.

[Thorburn]

Firstly, the 680i SLI is a two chip solution as well, as explained in the article - the SPP and the MCP. The 680a just has two chips similar to the 680i's MCP.

Hardly the same thing that though. I'd imagine the 680i's SPP is a good deal smaller and cheaper than the MCP.

Just because its two chips does not mean they'll be priced identically.

[Thorburn]

And the pricing quoted is straight from AMD - $999 for the FX-74, $799 for the FX-72, and £599 for the FX-70. That's for a pack of TWO processors.

I know its a typo but the £ seems more likely. If its dollars then that works out at roughly £350 for two CPU's.
AMD can't even manufacture enough 2.6GHz Opteron 2218's to meet demand and they sell at £400 a piece on Scan.
Why would they take two CPU's from a market that can really benefit from quad core and will lap up anything it can get its hands on and sell them for less than half the price?

If they had excess of them kicking about then it would make sense to shift some inventory. As it is the price you've quoted for the FX-72 is roughly what they currently sell the FX-62 for.

Makes utterly no sense to me.

[James Morris]

Hardly the same thing that though. I'd imagine the 680i's SPP is a good deal smaller and cheaper than the MCP.

Just because its two chips does not mean they'll be priced identically.

Not sure either one of us knows the true answer to that. I'll ask Nvidia, though, next time I get the chance.

I know its a typo but the £ seems more likely. If its dollars then that works out at roughly £350 for two CPU's.
AMD can't even manufacture enough 2.6GHz Opteron 2218's to meet demand and they sell at £400 a piece on Scan.
Why would they take two CPU's from a market that can really benefit from quad core and will lap up anything it can get its hands on and sell them for less than half the price?

If they had excess of them kicking about then it would make sense to shift some inventory. As it is the price you've quoted for the FX-72 is roughly what they currently sell the FX-62 for.

Makes utterly no sense to me.

The price I'm quoting, as I said, was directly from AMD. Whether it makes any sense is up to them! Between you and me, though, how many QX6700s has Intel sold so far? From the reception on these forums, I don't see it flying off the shelves, no matter how good it is. Likewise, even if Quad FX is better it probably won't sell in droves, and we don't have concrete numbers on that. Yet.