AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 & Quad FX Platform Review

[satanicoo]

Was this a single FX-74 against a single QX6700?
Or a dual FX-74 against a QX6700?

I mean, in the benchmarks i see them somewhat close, and if it is only a single, dual-core FX-74, wow...

Too bad the monstruous power consuption...

 

[D4hPr0]

Was this a single FX-74 against a single QX6700?
Or a dual FX-74 against a QX6700?

I mean, in the benchmarks i see them somewhat close, and if it is only a single, dual-core FX-74, wow...

Too bad the monstruous power consuption...

No..it was 2 FX-74 chips against one QX6700.

 

[Clockworks]

Jeez, this thing would drive my electricity bill up by 20 percent.

EDIT: I looked at other reviewer's benchmarks and found somewhat the same result, this thing is a lot of power but Intel's Quad 6700 is still faster than this monster.

 

[magoo]

Damn. Thats all there is to say......Damn.

Great article, purdy pictures.

I feel very puney today......I just ordered an e6700,2GB of DDR2 800,and an ASUS P5N32-E SLI MoBo..........feels like I bought a tricycle compared to a Harley-Davidson.

 

[InorganicMatter]

You know, somehow "I told you so" doesn't quite do it right here.

gg AMD, hope you can someday in the far, far future return to the enthusiast market.

 

[newls1]

At least for 599 you get *2* FX72's

 

[D4hPr0]

At least for 599 you get *2* FX72's

Which should piss off a lot of FX users that paid full price for theirs.

 

[FrgMstr]

Sorry to have to link you to your OWN review Kyle... but it seems you need a bit of a refresher already! Long day huh?

Since these are the tests where C2Q soundly beats FX-74, and the rest of the benchmarks and applications are neck and neck, how hard can it be to declare a winner? I won't even include the gaming benchmarks because [H] doesn't take them seriously, and I respect that.

However, we can conclude that in 2/3 of the real world application tests, the differences between an FX-74 and QX6700 is negligible. But in the remaining 1/3, the QX6700 has a clear advantage.

The greater multitasking ability of C2Q ALONE should give it a decisive edge over the FX-74, as it's supposedly targeted at 'megataskers', and well, it's not 'megatasking' as well as C2Q!

Don't tell me it's hard to pick a winner here, because it's all damn clear for everyone to see.

The way you're trying to word things, it's as if an FX-74 is the equal of the QX6700. That clearly is NOT the case when we look at the entire picture.

I could set you up to do a blind test and you would not be able to tell me the differences between the machines unless you had a stopwatch. That is a fact. There is no discernable differences in real world usage models.

Until that exists, I am not going to call it a victor for either box.

 

[jebo_4jc]

I'm most excited about the "mainstream" (if you can call it that) FX-70 for $599....If the FX-70 can overclock to around/above 3.0ghz, it will make a pretty nice "budget" quad core system.


These FX CPU's are multiplier unlocked like all the others, right?

 

[fallingapples]

So given that this AMD quad core solution is slower than Kentsfield in the majority of cases, consumes twice as much power, isn't really any cheaper, and doesn't overclock as well... why do you refuse to call a winner? Or at the very least make a more relevant, less vauge conclusion to your article. I don't care if AMD4x4 is the H2 of the computer world, and I don't need to be told it is "capable". I'm sure it is. I just want to know, bottom line, is there any point in getting this over Kentsfield?

If the answer is NO, how hard is it to declare a winner?

 

[Dataplague]

It seems that intel still holds the crown.

 

[Mabrito]

^^ Ditto on that....
Intel is the CLEAR winner here from many points of view...

Performance: Intel wins in most test. It would win in ALL by bigger margins if run at same clock (3GHz)
Power usage: Intel wins hands down
Overclocking: Intel's QX chips have been seen running at 3.4GHz+ (that's from 2.66GHz). With 90nm Quad FX you'll get maybe another 2~300MHz with Vapo and 1.5kW power supply...

As it is, the Quad FX to me is like Intel taking Pentium D's and sticking them in a dual-socket mobo... EVERYBODY would call it a "hack-job" and a ridicule it, yet AMD gets this:

"AMD’s Quad FX platform is big, bad, expensive, piggish, powerful, and has an extended upgrade path that will allow power users double the desktop power in 2007. You could call the AMD Quad FX the HUMMER H2 of the computer world...."

I dunno....

Well said. Dont think it can be said better than that. Maybe when K8L comes out, 4x4 will be show much more usefullness.

 

[saan44]

I have to agree with the general consensus at this point. Given the price and power consumption of the 4x4 setup and the relatively small gains it has in the few benches it did win, the Intel solution seems like a far better option at this point.

That may change with the easy upgradability to octocore when the barcelona kits drop, but until that point, unless AMD makes some changes this system is only going to be for people with too much money and/or AMD die hards.

It's true that AMD has taken an aging architecture and upgraded it to compete with Intel Core which is commendable, but at the same time they're going to need to do more than this to not get completely stomped in the enthusiast market. Maybe taking 4x4 and upgrading to octocore will do that, but until we get solid benches on that when they're released, Intel seems to be the clear choice.

 

[FrgMstr]

I have to agree with the general consensus at this point. Given the price and power consumption of the 4x4 setup and the relatively small gains it has in the few benches it did win, the Intel solution seems like a far better option at this point.

Yes it is. No doubt about that, and I think we showed our readers exactly that. It is amazing that so many people want to be spoon fed now days. If you can't read our conclusion page alone and come to the decision that Intel's QX6700 is a better investment at this time, then we did not do our job. But the fact is that you can.

Here, I added two sentences to the bottom line for thos of you that need it spelled out for you.

If you are wanting to buy a quad-core machine now with no regards to upgrading to to an octo-core plaform later, you would be remiss to not invest in the Intel QX6700. The QX6700 is cheaper, uses less power, and will give you slightly better performance.

 

[FrgMstr]

Let me know if there are any of you that need your hand held while you go potty.

 

[Riddlinkidstoner]

After reading several reviews that have suddenly popped up, I can honestly say that AMD's 4x4 wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Intel definately has them by the balls here, I mean really...500 watts...without a video card? Throw me a damn bone AMD.

[H]ard is probably one of the only review sites that actually gave any credit to AMD, I just looked at Toms Hardware and they totally smacked AMD in the face with their 4x4 platform.


Ridiculous. I guess the move onto Intel is finalizing.

 

[saan44]

Ridiculous. I guess the move onto Intel is finalizing.

Which is sad if true. I don't think we've seen the last of AMD, not by a long shot. Either way though, competition is good for consumers. Even the most staunch of AMD or Intel !!!!!!s should have respect for the other company and the fact that the 1upsmanship between the two companies keeps prices (relatively) low for everyone and even if you hate AMD or Intel, lower prices are a good thing.

 

[FrgMstr]

After reading several reviews that have suddenly popped up, I can honestly say that AMD's 4x4 wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Intel definately has them by the balls here, I mean really...500 watts...without a video card? Throw me a damn bone AMD.

[H]ard is probably one of the only review sites that actually gave any credit to AMD, I just looked at Toms Hardware and they totally smacked AMD in the face with their 4x4 platform.


Ridiculous. I guess the move onto Intel is finalizing.

I find it sad that many people only see black and white when they look at computer hardware, obviously you don't Riddlinkidstoner, props to you. I think AMD has some real success in this 4X4 platform, although there is no doubt that it is not for everyone, or even most people. If AMD can get their shit together on 65nm process I have to guess that Barcelona is going to be great product.

And yes, my move to Intel was finalized some time ago. My next system will have an E6300 in it pumping along at 3.1GHz without breaking a sweat. Hell, if I burn one up every two months for a year, it will still be cheaper than a X6800. So by a lot of these guys' logic here, that make the X6800 a POS.

 

[sxotty]

I see a great value in the dual socket move. It would have been great if it was AM2 chips though so you could put two 3800x2 in there. As it stands it is still over priced for what it offers, but perhaps in the future it won't be.

The truth is Intel and AMD are very frightened of the idea of enabling people to buy low end dual cores and make a quad core b/c it would kill the sales of their ridiculously overpriced chips.

Especially if it overclocks decently. One could even use a single core in each for an incredibly cheap dual core system. Anyway they are afraid of eroding margins and it is for good reason.

That is the only reason this is good, it might pressure intel to release a dual socket mobo for consumers at some point.

 

[Clockworks]

Might I suggest to go with the E6400? The higher multiplier will make it easier to overclock it and is less stressful on the chip. My two cents on your next build (not that YOU need them ).

 

[PunjabiPlaya]

Are there any significant predicted performance gains from the enhanced scheduler and/or NUMA conflict resolution in Vista? To my understanding, the winxp scheduler is just awful and rudimentary and not optimized for performance, just compatability.

Also, according to Hexus.net: "Before delving into our test setup and benchmark scores, however, we should point out that the ASUS L1N64-SLIWS mainboard sent to us by AMD in this NPRP reference system was not exactly final production. In particular, AMD told us that the current 0117 BIOS has a bug which affects synthetic memory benchmarks. The NUMA system is also foreshortened by problems with the BIOS's Static Resource Affinity Tables. This tells the operating system which memory blocks are associated with which processor, so processes load data into local memory, not memory attached to the other processor. We also found graphics performance very inconsistent with the SLI configuration supplied by AMD, and this wasn't directly comparable to our other single-card test setups anyway. So we switched to the same ATi Radeon X1900XTX as we currently use in our standard test setups."

edit: Tom's seems more focused on showing off their editors in elf costumes than actual valid benchmarks with valid discussions about performance/features/etc...
edit2: AMD's solutions have always been very elegant and engineered with precision, while Intel has taken brute force methods (yes, even with c2d and the micro-ops). Just waiting on Vista/64 bit benchies. Will someone buy AMD another fab? Anyone?

 

[IanG]

Nice review, and very good pictures of the board. From one of the shots it looks like you slightly bent one of the black sata ports.

About the power consumption - do these fx chips use cool'n'quiet, and was it enabled? I know the nforce chipsets use quite a bit of juice, so having two of them will make a difference, but c'n'q has made a gigantic difference in idle temps with my opty and A64.

It seems like we have a situation completely reversed from last year when amd was pounding intel about the scorching pentium Ds and PrescHOTs, which is hard to take as an AMD fan.

 

[Jaffrin]

I have some technical questions concerning the 3d studio renders. First, you have a link to the website you acquired the models but no way of finding the models on the web site, please either post a link or the title of the model on the website. Second, could you include a link to the images you rendered or post them with the specification you used when setting up the render. I work with Max and would like to see what it was you were working with to get a feel for the power of the processors reviewed.

Thank you

 

[prominentlecturer]

edit2: AMD's solutions have always been very elegant and engineered with precision, while Intel has taken brute force methods (yes, even with c2d and the micro-ops). Just waiting on Vista/64 bit benchies. Will someone buy AMD another fab? Anyone?

I don't think you're going to get anyone to believe that the QuadFX platform is anything other than a brute-force attempt to capitalize on multi-processor mania by AMD. I mean, come on, two individual dual core processors, essentially as the review said two motherboards on one PCB? What's elegant about that?

I am disappointed at what I am seeing here, both in the review and in this discussion. I think Kyle said it best in that hardware is not black and white. There are going to be users for whom the QuadFX system will be ideal - I am not one of them though.

And to the person who wondered where Intel will be when AMD hits octo-core, to you I say, EXACTLY! I doubt we will see Intel resting on its laurels here.

I also have the same question with regards to multipliers - are all the new FX-7x series chips multiplier unlocked as previous FX-5x and -6x chips have been?

Will there be a path for those people who can only afford a single CPU that still want to have the dual motherboard for future upgradability? You know, buy one 1207 chip now, another later after prices have dropped? Or will they only be sold in the dual packaging for the forseeable future?

Finally, any comments on the single processor performance of the new setup? IE, how does one half of the FX-7x series perform - is it identical performance wise to a 64x2 whatever at the same clock speed? Or are there additional features built in that I missed?

 

[Paul_Jastrzebski]

Jaffrin,

Sure thing.. I'll post them a bit later today

 

[PunjabiPlaya]

I don't think you're going to get anyone to believe that the QuadFX platform is anything other than a brute-force attempt to capitalize on multi-processor mania by AMD. I mean, come on, two individual dual core processors, essentially as the review said two motherboards on one PCB? What's elegant about that?

I didn't say that QuadFX was elegant. It does capiltalize on AMD's awesome server platform and HT interconnect. However, it is still brute force. AMD is just doing what it can to make up for it's manufacturing inferiorities.

C2D with integrated memory controller + AMD's DirectConnect...

 

[yehuda]

Good review as always.

Seems to me the current amd 4x4 solution isn't much more then a technology/product showcase.
Sales will probably be low, and AMD knows it.

I'm wondering how much heat this monster produces. Waiting for the OC results.

 

[Paul_Jastrzebski]

As for the single CPU stuff, I took it out of the equation for a few reasons: we were comparing the flagship to flagship and it's really been two years since a single core CPU was available.

However, I see what you're saying, and seeing single vs quad would be interesting to look at since some of us still run them.. but my take was that you can't buy any single core CPU's anymore, so why bother?

 

[Makaveli@BETA]

i'm gonna have to agree with kyle on this one. You all make valid points, but he has highlighted its strengths and weakness and I thought the review was fair on both sides. I think some of u guys just like to nitpick and argue like a bunch of granny's at the retirement home.

If u don't like his conclusion or opinon the answer is simple. Get a 4x4 rig and write your own review.

 

[Riddlinkidstoner]

The truth is Intel and AMD are very frightened of the idea of enabling people to buy low end dual cores and make a quad core b/c it would kill the sales of their ridiculously overpriced chips.

Especially if it overclocks decently. One could even use a single core in each for an incredibly cheap dual core system. Anyway they are afraid of eroding margins and it is for good reason.

That is the only reason this is good, it might pressure intel to release a dual socket mobo for consumers at some point.

I highly dout AMD and Intel are overly concerned with the killing of sales due to low end, cheaper dual core/quad core CPUs. Lets face it, only a small percentage are aware of the ability to overclock and an even smaller percentage know how to do it and do it well and even then most of them need the warranty more than they need the speed. There will always always always be a market for higher end chips at a very high demand because people will want more speed for multiple tasks.

And actually, the price of processors has been going down at a steady rate over the years if you take into account the amount of performance gain vs the cost of previous generations. The manufacturing process, the amount of chips they can make per wafer, etc makes things easier for them to pump out chips at lower costs. When new chips hit the market of course they will be overpriced but give it time and it'll drop (maybe not Kentsfield...not with the current status of the competition.)

Bottom line is, if they were so concerned over it, they wouldn't release them.

 

[Hokum15]

Kyle... Did you manage to get 4x 8800GTX's on it in SLI???

then you may see a defference in performance... in games at least... with quad Quadro 8800 eqv's it may also see better performace over the quad intel?

 

[chrisf6969]

Looks like a flop to me

#1. Its gaming performance is not all that great.

#2. Its going to cost a lot to build & run between the highend mobo, 4 sticks of ram, and requiring a gigawatt of power!

#3. Its marketed to the "enthusiast", well most computer entusiasts use their computers for gaming, and its performance is average at best there.

I am (pleasantly) surprised about the price points though. I guess they HAD to sell them for <$1000/pair if they wanted to be even closely cost effective compared to a QX6700.

With all the extra cost, you might was well build yourself a Xeon system, and you can have quad core or oct-core now.

Kyle... Did you manage to get 4x 8800GTX's on it in SLI???

He tried to but his whole neighborhood went black. Then the electric company berated him for breaking the whole neighborhood's power gird.

 

[BigDH01]

Who cares about octa-core? I mean honestly. People who need 8 cores because of their professional can already get 8 core servers from both AMD and Intel. On the desktop, you won't see 8 cores being utilized for a long time. Look up Amdahl's law and view the kind of dimishing returns you get on code that is as little as 10% serialized. Eight cores will be a waste on the desktop for quite a long time. I'm much more interested in native quad cores on the desktop. That's what we should be looking forward to, not octa-core.

And I think it'd be a waste to buy a slower, more expensive, more power-hungry 4x4 system today with the expectations of upgrading to 8 cores in the future. That's probably a $2000 upgrade today + $2000 upgrade next year to get those 8 cores. Why don't you just wait until next year when quad core AMDs are actually released and do the upgrade? Save you 1k in CPU costs. 4x4 is dead in the water right now.

 

[Ockie]

Kyle... Did you manage to get 4x 8800GTX's on it in SLI???

then you may see a defference in performance... in games at least... with quad Quadro 8800 eqv's it may also see better performace over the quad intel?

Umm this is not possible unless if you removed the heatsinks, watercooled it, and removed the slot brackets.

Then you'd still be limited to 8x pcie on two of the slots.

 

[BigDH01]

Can you even run 4 8800 GTXs in this machine? I think that 4th PCI-E slot can't be used if you use a video card that has a 2-slot cooling solution. I think you'd have to watercool.

 

[Riddlinkidstoner]

AMD had to keep a low price point for the procs/mobos because totaling the costs of the rest of the system it would of been highway robbery to expect anyone to buy it. 4GBs of RAM? RAM is still insanely expensive. A kilowatt of power? Especially a decent branded one that won't fry your newly bought system?

Ibuypower.com is carrying the Quad FX platform at < $2000 BUT...

- It only comes with 512 ram (one per cpu or just one I'm not sure...but obviously its not enough to make it worth while)

- Power supply is just enough to power the system...without a video card or probably any hard drives lol. EDIT: Nvm, Thermaltake Toughpower 750w.

- Comes with Windows Media Center edition...which clearly states that it only supports one physical socket...so why even offer it?

Its ok though, who in there right mind buys from ibuypower.com

 

[jstnomega]

Looking on the bright side: w/this product cycle, AMD has produced something I don't want, don't need, can't use and can't afford.

My wallet thanks you, AMD.

 

[Hokum15]

Umm this is not possible unless if you removed the heatsinks, watercooled it, and removed the slot brackets.

Then you'd still be limited to 8x pcie on two of the slots.

BFG have the factory water cooled single slot model...

 

[FlintMurdock]

In comparing AMD's older K8 arch to Intel's Core 2 and saying two K8's can compete and give Intel some competition at the high end, why not just admit Intel has effectively done more with less silicon? You are saying the real world difference is too small to say Intel is clearly ahead, but it is AMD that is playing catchup.

Two years ago, when the Pentium EE's were out and running hot and keeping it close in multimedia benches, why wasn't anyone praising them soley for using brute force to compete with AMD? Everyone was very appreciative of INTEL and AMD's efforts to produce chips with more performce per watt. I don't think AMD deserves any praise for slapping this together anymore than Intel deserved any praise for the Pentium D's. It's a Hail Mary.

Instead of looking at how much AMD has done to get to this point, think of how little Intel had to do to raise the bar.

Sorry if my opinion is not popular with the writing and editing staff.

 

[BigDH01]

BFG have the factory water cooled single slot model...

But then you still have to have a watercooling setup in your rig. Tack on more money for that.