Is the 4x4 an AMD fluke?
I have been following up with the latest AMD 4x4 and I gotta say: it does not look hot so far. Many issues seem to haunt AMD which used to haunt Intel for the last 3 years: Power consumption, noise, price, performance.
Does this product seem to you an out of character of AMD? It does to me!
So, why did AMD introduce such a product? Will this product take off? Did AMD hope that its loyal customers will buy it anyway? Or is it just a desparate move to spoil Kentsfield party?
I am afraid that this product's halo effect may hurt AMD's image. It reminds me of what the Pentium D did to Intel.
What do you think?
posted by IT Kitty Cat at 10:15 AM
7 Comments:
Even though it's a horrible product and an embarassment, I don't think it will end up harming AMD's image.
Everyone knows it's a scrambled attempt to catch up to Kentsfield. It's something AMD has to do to prove it's still alive. (Not that I personally like AMD, but they need to exist in order to bring competition into the game to keep everything moving.)
And such is the world of CPU manufacturing. Fall behind, claw ahead. And repeat.
7:02 AM
I think the release of FX-70 CPUs is not what AMD intended for 4x4 (official name is "AMD Quad FX platform", though), I think their ultimate goal is the use of K8L Athlon FXs in it.
By using 2 Quad-core K8L in the platform, this gives you 8-cores and 4 graphic cards, similar config to current Xeon Mac Pros (2P setup, 4 Graphic Cards and without the ECC (registered) FB-DIMM thingy of course), which current Intel Core 2 Duo setups cannot offer (with 2P and 4 processor setup, you must have Xeon and... um, no... Only Mac Pros can give the same config), thus AMD is gaining a plus here, just because no similar competitions in the PC market! (But, somebody may compare 4x4 to the Mac Pros... I forgot that... What a shame...)
One more thing is that the probable 8-core "New Architecture" for Intel, the Nahalem (spelling?) perhaps, comes in 2 years (45nm process, and remember the "tick-tock model"?), so you'll have 8-core workstations (Yeah, I'm talking about workststions! Not gaming machines, note that the extra CPU won't give you more fps in games, as the bottleneck is on the GPU itself!) 1 year before 8-core CPUs to become available. Another plus here.
With 4x4 and K8L ("Altair FX"), unless Intel decides to give the Core 2 Duo and Quad a chance to do 2P and without the use of ECC FB-DIMMs (which Intel highly recommends, who will be so stupid to spoil their own plans?) in the PC arena, or 4x4 will surely have no competitions in the PC market, it is just a matter of Price of cooling, Quad-cores, "chipsets" (only NVIDIA and ASUS L1N64-SLI WS, OMG!!) and time for 4x4 to be popular (and DON'T forget that the 4x4 is for ENTHUSIASTS only, those who just browse the net and play FLASH games should consider to remove the system out of their shopping lists!).
okay, that's enough of my moonshine. Have a nice day, guys!
ck
3:07 AM
Some corrections:
Mac Pros have 8 FB-DIMM slots, and support maximum of 16GB ECC FB-DIMM, and 4x4 supports 4 DDR2 slots, support a maximum of 8GB non-registered DDR2 DIMM RAM
ck
3:17 AM
I think the 4x4 will be forgotten soon, especially with almost no major OEM support.
I do not think this will hurt AMD's in the long run. Here is the catch though: If the K8L does not live up to the hype that AMD has been spreading, it can be a huge blow..
I agree though, AMD has to do something quick to stall Kentsfield.
12:14 PM
4x4? what 4x4?
7:13 PM
"4x4" is a codename for "AMD Quad FX platform", aimed at "Enthusiasts"...
ck
7:42 PM
I think that FX-7x are provided as an aid to "paid-by entusiasts" - "public beta-testing" of QFX platform.
Sort of like Steinberg's Cubase users always did ...
9:43 AM
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