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AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 & Quad FX Platform Review

AMD's much hyped "4X4" system today brings dual socket Athlon 64 FX processors to the desktop allowing two dual-core AMD processors to be used. This in effect gives us a quad-core system and paves the way for a true octo-core desktop platform next year.

Introduction

If you take a look back at the microprocessor industry, and more specifically the battles between Intel and AMD over the last few years, you see that a see-saw pattern of enthusiast market dominance tends to emerge. We see either Intel or AMD on top for a while, then due to an ambitious product launch or manufacturing delay, the reigning king is usually dethroned and the cycle starts over. The enthusiast segment is the cream of the crop for both companies, and although there isn’t a lot of volume in $999 processors, bragging rights that your’s are the fastest in the world provides marketing leverage that cannot be purchased. AMD was the first to reach 1GHz (And [H] was the first to destroy one!) while Intel dominated the Athlon XP with the Pentium 4, but then the Athlon 64 emerged and single-handedly whipped Intel for three years running. Fast forward to present day and Intel’s Conroe chip remains dominant on the desktop front, with the company’s Kentsfield quad-core chip the dominant performance leader at the ultra high end.

Get the Lead Out AMD

So what’s been taking so long for AMD to get their quad-core CPU out on the market? It really boils down to manufacturing ability, which points out one of the most, if not the most, significant advantages Intel has over AMD. The fact of the matter is that Intel has many more fabrication facilities that feature more advanced manufacturing processes than AMD, allowing the company to make more next-generation processors at a cheaper cost while bringing the technology to market more quickly. Intel has been producing 65nm wafers in volume for months and is slated to start producing 45nm wafers in the second half of 2007 while AMD is barely producing 65nm wafers and 45nm product is off somewhere into 2008.

This in essence is why AMD isn’t launching a native quad-core CPU to go head-to-head against Intel’s Kentsfield based Core 2 QX6700. AMD needs a smaller package to bridle all the quad-core performance and keep it inside a manageable power envelope. Instead, the company is using what it has readily available and launching its Quad FX platform today (affectionately known as the “4X4”) with the AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 and accompanying NVIDIA nForce 680a chipset and ASUS motherboard.

AMD Quad FX and FX-74

So what exactly is this new “Quad FX” platform and Athlon 64 FX-74 processor?

The FX-74 is two discrete dual-core 3GHz Socket 1207 processors packaged in one box. The two chips do resemble Socket 1207 Opteron processors that use non-ECC DDR2 memory.

The FX-74 processors sit atop of NVIDIA’s nForce 680a chipset, an enthusiast class board you’d expect to be running Google’s web servers instead of a heated game of Ghost Recon. The Quad FX Platform truly comes into play in the second half of 2007 when AMD will have their native quad-core processors ready, giving you a 4-core by 4-core system. At that time enthusiasts will be able to use the Quad FX platform to drop two quad-core CPU’s into their system giving you an octo-core desktop system.

If you think about it from AMD’s standpoint, developing this Quad FX Platform will be a way to overcome the manufacturing advantage that Intel has over it. AMD now has the ability to drop two processors into a desktop board while Intel has only one. More on that a bit later.

A new socket isn’t the only thing that AMD is changing with the FX-74. For the first time in the product line’s history, the company is co-releasing sub $999 variants of its flagship processors, with the $599 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-70 and the $799 2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX-72; both of which feature two processors in the box like the FX-74.

With that said, we’ve only scratched the surface with what the FX-74 means to us as consumers and AMD as a company. Let’s take a closer look at the FX-74 and what it has in store for us.