AMD's Quad FX platform: some details and doubts

So we know AMD was launching the Quad FX platform this week (that officially happened in America today), but we were a little hard up for info on what that actually entailed. Well, here's what's what: the obviously enthusiast platform aims to please by eschewing AMD's own lower performing (yet wholly owned) ATI products for NVIDIA and its nForce 680a-based chipsets (yes, we know), and will feature quad and octo-core support (yep). They're touting twelve SATA connections for up to 9TB of storage, 20 USB 2.0 channels, four gig Ethernet ports, four or eight monitors powered by up to four PCI-E cards, and Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture designed for optimized performance (or so they tell us). What wasn't clear, however, is that US pricing on the FX-70 series chips are for bundles; helping put one of those fours in 4x4, AMD's FX-70 (2.6GHz), FX-72 (2.8GHz), and FX-74 (3.0GHz) processors -- which use the same Socket F previous Opterons have -- will be sold in pairs for $600, $800, and $1000, respectively, literally doubling the value. Affordable is, of course, par for AMD -- except for one thing. Although we haven't tested these new chips ourselves, PC Perspective is reporting that an Impress study showed these new FX-series processors to be monstrously less efficient in cycles per watt of power consumption than Intel's. One graph (shown after the break) has an FX-74 gobbling what looks like near double the juice of a Core 2 Extreme QX6700 chip for comparable (or lesser) performance values. Whether that will hold you back from (re-)investing in AMD's new platform is up to you, but we know you're not the type to buy blind anyway.

Read - AMD Quad FX release
Read - Impress tests [Via PC Perspective]

[Scabies @ Nov 30th 2006 3:54AM]

Ouch. Sad to see it so thoroughly trounced. I'm gonna grit my teeth (and grab a fire extinguisher) and point out that a reference board is being used in these tests, so perhaps a retail version might better utilize what AMD now has to offer.
...we can only hope. Not like I even dream of going quad quad.
(I have to point out... four PCIex16 slots would probably be better utilized by ATI cards anyways, since you can mis-match (to some extent) the series of cards that you use. Two 1950xtx's in the big slots, then two 1950PRO's in the single slot spots, and "physics" the 1950pro's (does triple play work yet? anyone know?) otherwise you have to liquid cool cards that would normally take up an extra slot with the enlarged heatsink.)

[rektide @ Nov 30th 2006 3:56AM]

i was thinking of buying a dual socket f board to start growing a server on. buy the motherboard, one cpu and a little ram, then just keep adding to it. the current serverworks and nvidia chipset are very affordable, although they dont have quite as many pci express lanes. 2.2 ghz opterons are very reasonably price, unlike these expensive toys.

but, it turns out AMD is releasing a new iteration of HyperTransport soon. take warning: future processors arent going to run very well on these current boards. i suspect the l3 cache on the quad core is going to be pretty heavily crippled running on a board that only supports the current generation of HyperTransport. allegedly they'll run, but there's undoubtedly some work going into ccHT.

i was hoping QuadFather would be a next gen platform, but next gen still isnt quite here yet. get yourself a core2duo really really cheap and wait till this platform skirmish is more underway.

[rektide @ Nov 30th 2006 4:00AM]

whoops, i didnt see price was for two chips. still, that motherboard is going to cost way more than current dual socket solutions. and its basically already obsolete, in the face of the future HT, like I said.

those nvidia chipsets are huge power hogs too.

Scabies: ati's always had much better mergefb support. with nvidia, you basically run SLI, or have each graphics card display to its local monitors. they've never had much conception of sharing the workload. nvidia was much busier working on a streaming architecture (CUDA) within a chip than they were trying to solve that higher level shared workload task. they probably have 12 SATA so you can keep all those gpu's fed. what was that from todays Stanford talk, the over-read problem?

[Keaton @ Nov 30th 2006 4:24AM]

Oh what are you going to need a 2Kw power supply to run a fully equipped beast?!?!?!
Oh I'm sorry Mr. Electrician but I need a dedicated 20 amp circuit for my COMPUTER...
Ya... my Quad nVidia 8800 GTX's draw about 1.5Kw and I have just about enough power left to run my Octa-core AMD setup...
Jeez_us!

[mercuttio @ Nov 30th 2006 4:40AM]

I just still can't get over that ATI and AMD thing. Seems like everyone I know swore by an AMD / Nvidia rig right up until that whole Dual Core business.

[Tom @ Nov 30th 2006 5:01AM]

Long live Core!

...for now...

[Robert @ Nov 30th 2006 5:54AM]

BENCHMARKS ARE GOOD NEWS FOR INTEL since they only have one Quad core out vs. AMD's full punch of "slower" processors... AMD are u there we need you to be the price / preformance king so intel will lower its prices but no responce has been heard since the launch of C2Duo...

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html - tomshardware
http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html?modelx=33&model1=604&model2=609&chart=186 - Intel Quad Vs. FX74

[Chris @ Nov 30th 2006 8:21AM]

lol i hate to say it but, with intel going to quad core, why is amd's response... well... dual processor dual core??? i mean isnt that... cheating? And to end up with slower performance at higher wattage? ugg what happened to amd they used to be the king but now the core line has like somehow gimped amd... i mean if its not against a pentium are they lost or something?

[Ben @ Nov 30th 2006 9:09AM]

Wow talk about a total 180. Its like I can swap AMD and Intel's names in every article I read now and it would sound just like all of the articles I was reading during the Pentium 4 Netburst era. Crazy.

[bsm0f0 @ Nov 30th 2006 9:52AM]

4 gigabit eth ports ... why? 20 usb 2.0 ... ???

At $1000 a pop, they can kiss my core 2 duo's ass. I've bought AMD procs since the mid 90s ... until my core 2 duo, a bit disappointed in the FX line thus far =/

[Demaar @ Nov 30th 2006 10:35AM]

Ouch. Not cool. I hope AMD is gonna be cool with all this. I mean, the only reason the Core Duos rock so hard is because Intel was feeling pressure from AMD (anyone that denies this is a fool).
I really hope they can remain strong competition against Intel.

[Josh @ Nov 30th 2006 10:37AM]

am i correct in my assumptions that these are 32bit tests for a 32bit intel chip? and not a 64 bit test. why are they continuing 32 bit crap when 64 bit has been here for so long. Drives me nuts. I want a 64 bit world... where AMD IS king. this 32bit crap has gotta go... thanks intel

[Matt @ Nov 30th 2006 2:06PM]

Just so you know, Intel's chips have been 64-bit for quite a while now.

[JM @ Nov 30th 2006 11:39AM]

It clearly says in AMD's release that Vista Ultimate is needed. The tests were done in XP SP2. Wouldn't there be a difference?????

[Nobuyuki Idei @ Dec 1st 2006 12:38PM]

Not necessarily. Only Vista Ultimate supports dual processors, but XP Prof has always supported dual procs.

[Benson Leung @ Nov 30th 2006 12:23PM]

JM : If the total chips consume more power, they will consume more power, no matter the version of the OS that you run on top. This is a case where you have 2 chips based on older, hotter, and not as efficient 90nm technology versus one chip based on the latest 65nm process. I'm not surprised the AMD dual dual core solution consumes way more power.

Josh : Intel's Core 2 processors are 64-bit as well, so the 64 bit versus 32bit doesn't benefit either side.

[ian @ Nov 30th 2006 4:41PM]

indeed matt is correct, intel has been 64 bit since pentium d

i do believe that amd is still better in 64 though
(but i havent checked on the core 2's)

[Geordan @ Nov 30th 2006 5:09PM]

Why the heck is that picture of an AMD logo shopped onto an LGA775 processor? Get it straight guys! The day AMD finally goes pinless is the day we can all start getting on with the 21st century.

[eugene @ Nov 30th 2006 7:39PM]

but you DO have to factor in the price savings. a single qx6700 costs $1500 from Intel, and thats just for the chip. on the other hand, AMD's system costs $600 for the same clockspeed, 2 chips, AND the mobo. yes, you do take a performance hit, but its not massive. its not like you're comparing a PIII to a C2D or something. Plus, AMD's system has tons of room for expandibility. Its an afforidble option for people who don't have 1500 to shell out for a single quadcore chip.

[eugene @ Nov 30th 2006 8:30PM]

oh yeah, and that isn't a photoshopped pic. thats socket F, which is more like Intel's LGA775 than anything else.

[rektide @ Dec 1st 2006 1:39AM]

you people comparing intel quad core chips to this are just morons. totally different purposes geniuses. the reason the intel trounces on the gaming benchmarks (the only ones you read) are because the intel chips have off the wall fpus built explicitly for these gaming benchmarks. amds taking a hit for not having through of that one particular niche case earlier, but they'll be back on top at some point in that game too. amd, otoh, has a real infrastructure going here, more than just a cpu. even if it does use two of the most power hungry chipsets mankind will ever see. amd will have a quad core soon enough, a couple months isnt going to make much difference. when taht day comes, amd, unlike intel, will have a platform to run it.

what the ehf is with the decision to put both northbridges off the same cpu? one of the cpu's is miles away from all the action. i would've distributed the loading better.

i cant wait till gamers start getting their doors broken down as suspected pot growers. "we saw the power meter running in circles and assumed he had to be growing".

[Andreas @ Dec 21st 2006 12:09PM]

And.. eh... comparing a quad setup with a dual core is pretty shady. Why won't they compare an AMD quad setup with an intel quad setup and compare the numbers?

[IceB1ood @ Jan 27th 2007 4:45PM]

I feel so sorry for the people that will purchase in the future any Pentium Quad chips. It's like people being blinded by Marketing Scams like the way people belive that MAC is better than PC :P. AMD will and always have been the Pentium killer. AMD is the chip that hardly ever, if at all adevertises its' speed demons and still manages to threaten poor Pentium :P. These NEW AMD chips for 2007 requirer less wattage then POWER HUNGRY SLOB PENTIUMS. Pentium cant seem to get out of the 800 mhz FSB sceem. It takes 4 cores o bump it to 1066 mhz FSB compared to AMD's 2 gig FSB. It also take 4 cores to beat 2 cores of AMD just by a hair. Out of all the reviews and personal experience with a decent graphics card, AMD in any bench mark and in any chipset out runs Pentium. Pentium has RUSH JOB all over their CPUs. I will always be a AMD MAN :P