AMD's Quad FX: Technically Quad Core
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 30, 2006 1:16 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
How does a 3GHz Athlon 64 X2 Perform?
Although today's story is mostly about AMD's Quad FX platform, there is a little gem worth mentioning. AMD's top of the line Athlon 64 FX-74 processors run at 3.0GHz, the highest shipping frequency of any AMD desktop CPU. While it won't be until next year before we see 3.0GHz in an Athlon 64 X2, we were curious to get a little preview of what the dual core race would look like early next year. Note that many of these tests are using updated benchmarks using newer versions of our applications and thus can't be compared to previous results.
The showdown is between the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3.0GHz, 1MB L2 per core) and the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MB L2):
Intel still has the performance advantage, even once AMD reaches 3.0GHz. We didn't expect another 200MHz to do much but it's further confirmation that AMD will need a new architecture to compete; the second half of 2007 can't come quickly enough for AMD.
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mino - Friday, December 1, 2006 - link
If you would bother to read, you would see those IDLE numbers are Without C'n'C.Witch C'n'C the IDLE number is be more like 250W than 380W.
mino - Sunday, December 3, 2006 - link
Hell, I should REALLY read after myself more thoroughly...JKing76 - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
What have you got against pickup trucks?Genx87 - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
I think it is safe to say Intel has caught AMD with its pants down this round with their Core 2 Duo line of products. Intels product line is much more compelling and performance\watt is scary good for Intel.Hell Intel's offering must be good, it got me to buy their product for the first time in nearly a decade! ;)
mino - Friday, December 1, 2006 - link
Actually not.AMD has caught Intel pants down in 2003. It took Intel 3!!! years to come back to game.
Those 3 yrs Intel was NOT price competitive.
Intel has just caught up in midle of 2006, this was to be expected and WAS expected by AMD.
AMD is about to catch up to Intel after 1 year..
This 1 year AMD IS price competitive, hence it is still in the game..
The 2008 Intel CSI may catch AMD with pants down. May.
Actually, in 2008 AMD will have some 30-35% marketshare and be so well entrenched in the corporate market that some mild performance(as now) hiccup is not gonna hurt them in any serious manner.
Roy2001 - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
If you need quad-core/CPU system, kentsfield is a much better choice, no question asked.sprockkets - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
Why is it that just putting the other 2 cores on the same package reduces power consumption so much?Anyhow, yeah, Intel is ahead, though this would be good for servers, not for desktops. Even so, Intel for now is still better.
But, I found for perhaps 90% of all people, an old s754 board with a $45 dollar Sempron works fast enough. I wish Anand would check out the new C7 processor mini ITX boards to see how well it works for so little power consumption.
Furen - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
The QX6700 pretty much draws twice as much power as the E6700, the big benefit of going for quad-core in a single system is that you only have one motherboard, harddrive, one set of RAM sticks, one video card, etc. The 4x4 is horribly engineered, I think even 400W at load is too much for two Opterons at 3GHz.mino - Friday, December 1, 2006 - link
Two Opterons DO NOT employ 8000GTX usually ...Two Opterons do have 95W TDP(lower voltage) ... compared to 125W for FXs
Two Opterons are available in 68W TDP ...
Two Opterons are NOT available in 3GHz flavour ....
Two Opterons are twice as expensive ....
Furen - Thursday, November 30, 2006 - link
The 4x4 motherboard, that is...