AMD's 4x4 setup to start at "about $1000"

Over the last few months, we've enjoyed snippets of information about AMD's new 4x4 platform, but until today we didn't know the speed of the chips, nor their prices. TG Daily just got all the info from a company event in Munich; the 4x4 will launch on November 14, with three different models of 125-watt FX processors: the 2.6GHz FX-72, 2.8GHz FX-74, and 3.0GHz FX-76. Further, the site also confirmed with AMD that the entry-level chips would go for "about $1000," and acknowledged that there still aren't that many pieces of software that can take advantage of two cores on two chips, besides Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. So the short of it is, that totally decked out gamer rig -- with a 4x4 powering the whole unit -- isn't going to come cheap.

[Steve Wallen @ Nov 10th 2006 7:11PM]

So 4x4 is a poor excuse for Core 2 Quad competition?

[Dave Pevsner @ Nov 10th 2006 7:25PM]

it isn't terrible, one dual-core athlonFX60 was about $1k per processor when it came out. this looks to be the retail price for both processors, and maybe the motherboard too. which makes $1k a lot less in perspective, than one would think, for a quad-core setup.

and most hardcore gamers will already have the latest and greatest graphics cards, so they won't have to buy new ones...HOLDUP, that says either CrossFire or SLi, maybe one chipset supporting both designs does exist, and AMD's dropping hints!


and if only vista ultimate is going to benefit from such power, and I know I'm going linux because of vista's pricetag, and because I want to see GNOME2.14, only servers are going to benefit from 4x4 or core 2 quad. so my consumer side screams "I'm still single core and proud of it!" and ad an AMD consumer I say "please let the server manufacturers pump out machines with this faster than soda and cigarrettes!"

[Dave Pevsner @ Nov 10th 2006 7:25PM]

oops typo, I meant that as an investor, I hope the server manufacturers pump out machines with 4x4 faster than soda and cigs.

[Sean @ Nov 10th 2006 9:19PM]

"So 4x4 is a poor excuse for Core 2 Quad competition?"

It is an interesting approach to the same issue. AMD is using the fact that they have memory controllers onboard their chips to give each processor independent memory access and has increased the speed of interprocessor communication.

All that said, many few operating systems support dual socket implementations and dual socket chips (seeing how you need 2) and motherboards are far more expensive than single versions.

All this piled on top of the fact that Intel's dual core chips handily wipe the floor with AMD's chips means AMD is going to have to really sell this setup.

[Giltronic @ Nov 11th 2006 2:04AM]

thats way too expensive.
intels chips are going to be cheaper, and people will go for them.
right now the amd dual core chips are super cheap and still pretty good, except the intel c2d have all the publicity and are more expensive.
how ironic

[OzI @ Nov 11th 2006 7:39AM]

This multi core stuff is just overkill and marketing shams, its not even the cores that make em faster its the increased L1 and L2 cache sizes. four 1.5 ghz *single core* parallel processors on a tyan is all the power one will ever need and its futur proof. Its no mystery that paralell processing is bad for buisness in the home user pc maketing world and funny how you must pay that fascist sofware squid Bill Gates license fees for paralell cpus on MS windows. --Its about you feeding the rich.--

[OzI @ Nov 11th 2006 8:24AM]

btw im not saying amd's quad core is not a an excellent processor im quite sure it is! Im just saying its unfare for intel and amd to make a 1000$ chip and calling *its best of*, so that when we buy less expensive processors we feel like where buying rotten meat, why not just sell 3 top rated chips for less and get rid of the lesser stuff! or else why must computing have to OUTPERFORM rather than just bloody function properly? anyways long rant short...even my friends at school refuse to pay more than 500$ for a complete pc , so forget 1000$ processors! These companies are multi millionaires why dont they just give em away, why must we feed the rich when it should be the other way around yo

[tekdemon @ Nov 12th 2006 3:34AM]

Seeing as how Intel is dropping Cloverton this year, I don't really see how this is going to give AMD any kind of an edge.
Cloverton will let people run 2 4-core processors...so the intel stuff will have 8 cores...
And umm, 8 cores is more than 4, plus the intel cores are more powerful to begin with...thus leaving AMD with a $1000+ solution that can hardly outperform a simple Kentsfield setup.

Well, good luck to them

[adrian @ Nov 12th 2006 6:37PM]

There isn't that much programs optimized for dual core processors yet, and they're trying to push quad cores?