Another seemingly gimped platform from AMD. Quad FX (aka 4x4) is based off of AMD's Opteron line and is essentially a dual-socket motherboard that allows AMD to do a quick-and-dirty answer to Intel's Quad core CPUs, by allowing users to purchase two dual core chips and use them together (two of them being priced at the same as 1 topend chip). Currently AMD's fab process is too large to put 4 cores on one chip. They say that once they come out with 4 core chips, you'll be able to go to 8 cores via 2 chips right away. It's pretty much inferior to Intels setup but it has one edge, namely that you could purchase one dual core proc now, and upgrade later by purchasing another one and sticking it in the board. Not to mention that you can get the latest FX-line chip for 500 bucks instead of 1000. Despite the generally craptacular aura surrounding quad fx, it does have one interesting aspect. As this platform is based on Opteron, it supports AMD's Torrenza technology. Torrenza was originally created to allow servers to sport custom co-processors that go in one socket of the mobo. So an opteron board that was meant to perform a very special task could have 1 opteron in it, and 1 custom processor that was very good at a specific type of operation (consumer processors are jack-of-all-trades). The reason this is interesting is that with AMD's recent purchase of ATI, its possible that they could start creating GPUs to fit in the second socket of the mobo, rather than in a PCI-E slot. Aside from obvious thermal advantages, this greatly increases bandwidth available to the GPU, lowers latency, and vastly improves the GPU's ability to access main memory. The only caveat would be that you would probably need more RAM to make up for lost memory on the video card. It is an interesting prospect that will hopefully see the light of day.
I hope AMD will do something to catch back up to Intel. I still haven't built a Core2Duo yet, but I'm very close to doing so. I prefer the motherboard line-up for AMD processors over Intel. It just seems you can find them more inexpensively and of better quality, or at least better chipsets. Right now, with my X2, I haven't noticed it not being able to keep up with what I need it to - mainly WoW - so I haven't had a reason to upgrade it. Though, it's getting to be about that time for a new PC for me, so I definately won't be going back to AMD, unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat.
That's the biggest advantage they have these days... quality Intel-centric motherboard options haven't been so anemic since before socket 478.
I'd hold your horses if I were you--if you can. Intel are supposed to be coming out with 45nm cores in 2007.
Yes most definitely. The main Intel fab in which they will be manufactured is in the beginning states of it's production ramp right now.
Well... thats true of 939 boards but not of Quad FX boards... there are VERY few, and they cost a ton.
Well QuadFX boards are pretty much enthusiast only boards. Sure, they have other uses, but they're so god-awful expensive, I just don't see a point, currently. There are a lot of nice AM2 and 939 boards, for sure though. I only wish there was the same selection for Intel. Thanks for the heads up on the new Intel CPUs. I would rather wait, since they usually use less power the smaller they shrink the die. Is there any sort of pricing indications? Currently I'm still using a socket 754 PCI-e, AMD Clawhammer 3400+ 1MB L2 cache. Currently, though, I think it is what is bottlenecking my video card.
Frankly I don't understand how amd can keep up. I read somewhere that they have only 1 fab location and another one that they rent from someone else. Intel has like 14 and they spend something like 11x more in R&D.
Well I believe AMD is parterning up with IBM or something along those lines. Unless that happened a long time ago. But I did just read an article about that today.
