AMD executives said this week that they will promote its '4x4' enthusiast platform to counter the Core 2 Duo. AMD also plans to push a sort of 'performance number' into the market to redefine how consumers should think about power. The 4x4 platform will place two physical sockets on a motherboard, connected by AMD's Direct Connect architecture. Mounted on each socket will be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, for a total of 4 cores. An eight-core '8X8' program will roll out in 2007.
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Member since:2005-07-09
Member since:2005-07-07
It does seem the best way right now to get large performance gains with little heat and energy consumption. This, however, doesn't seem the right strategy for AMD to be taking. I can see it offering a performance edge (I would think a pretty substantial one) for a very short time until Intel offers up a two socket platform of it's own.
Not exactly. Intel doesn't have DirectConnect, HyperTransport and an integrated memory contorller. AMD's solution will be a clear winner in terms of bandwith, and Intel won't be able to provide a similar system until they redesign their chipsets.
Member since:2006-03-12
From the article: "The 4x4 platform will place two physical sockets on a motherboard, connected by AMD's Direct Connect architecture. Mounted on each socket will be an AMD dual-core processor (not necessarily an AMD Athlon64 X2, according to an AMD representative), for a total of four cores."
When i read 4x4, i really was expecting something more - either a surprise 2-way quad-core cpu's, or some kind of wonder technology...
Still, i have very mixed feelings about this: on it's own, this "strategy" is sure to be a fiasco, but i think it will be somewhat usefull to demo the capacity of AMD's Direct Connect architecture.
Will it be enough to regain the market that they for sure *will* loose to Intel until K8L? not even close.
I hope they can come up with something more meanwhile...
Member since:2005-07-06
Will it be enough to regain the market that they for sure *will* loose to Intel until K8L? not even close.
I hope they can come up with something more meanwhile...
Given that Sun is now shipping 16 way Opteron machines in U2 form factor, running Solaris, one has to ask, when are we going to start seeing mainstream computer assemblers offer the same level of scalable machines running Intels processors.
Intel had the opportunity to close the gap with the adoption of CSI, they chose to instead keep with the old crusty bus they have now; it might win them back some customers, but server customers have now opened up and realised that Opteron can deliver more for less.
Member since:2005-07-09
Well whether it is a 4 x 4 or whatever AMD might call it the basica architecture is still K8 and not K8L right? So that just means they are slapping on more cores albeit on a 65 nm process so that should help clock speeds and power consumption and heat production somewhat. Still the architecture being the same, performance wont be different right? All you are doign is throwing more cores at the problem. The problem is that this is a bad idea because software is just not that multithreaded. There are few softwares like dvd rippers or encoders etc that will like having the extra cores but as an end user, it just does not help much for the price one will have to pay.
Intel did great because their cores seem to be single threaded as well as multithreaded champs. They run single threaded games a lot faster than their AMD counterpart and they are great at multitasking as well. But one thing surprises me is the size of the cache. Does anyone besides me think that is sorta on the large side?
Member since:
2006-04-28
It does seem the best way right now to get large performance gains with little heat and energy consumption. This, however, doesn't seem the right strategy for AMD to be taking. I can see it offering a performance edge (I would think a pretty substantial one) for a very short time until Intel offers up a two socket platform of it's own. I also don't see why the enthusiast couldn't have done this before with an opteron board. It seems that AMD won't have a true edge again until there 4 core parts.