AMD Releases Its 4x4 Platform, New FX CPUs

The quad-core space got a bit more interesting today as AMD released its Quad FX Platform (aka 4x4). Unlike Intel, which essentially put together two Core 2 Duo chips into one package in order to deliver four processor cores in the 2.66-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700, AMD opted to create an enthusiast motherboard with two CPU sockets. Populate those sockets with dual core processors and you've got four cores working for you.

AMD also released new FX-series chips along with the platform. The new processors range from the 2.6-GHz Athlon 64 FX-70, the 2.8-GHz Athlon 64 FX-72, to the 3-GHz Athlon 64 FX-74.

The PC World Test Center performed benchmark tests on an AMD-supplied system using the Quad FX Platform and a pair of new 3-GHz Athlon 64 FX-74 chips. Unsurprisingly, we saw little performance benefit for typical users. In fact, the system earned a WorldBench 5 score of just 136, 13 points below the score of a recently tested, PC World Lab-built system using Intel's quad-core chip.

The AMD Quad FX system was also beat by previously tested PC World Lab-built system with one of Intel's Core 2 Duo E6700 chips (which earned a score of 153), and a similar system using one of AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62 chips (with a score of 137).

Our tests did show some boosts to tasks with programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere compared to the single Athlon FX-62 system mentioned above. In tests with Ahead Nero Express, it outperformed the FX-62 system as well as the Core 2 Duo and quad-core Intel system (the AMD Quad FX system completed the test in 154 seconds while the others took about 30 seconds longer).

That said, however, the new platform wasn't designed for standard applications. It's meant to cater to demanding users who run high-end, multithreaded apps like video editing software, such as Sony's Vegas Studio 7, or plan to play the many multithreaded games heading our way in 2007 (AMD expects about 20 titles by early 2007). It should also help those who "megatask," that is perform several, demanding computing jobs at once, such as running two or more sessions of a game like World of Warcraft or City of Heroes, while also chatting on video IM, and encoding music or video with another program.

The motherboard itself, available from Asus with a chip set from NVidia, has plenty to offer. The two CPUs are linked to their own memory banks, and boast integrated memory controllers. You also get 4 PCI Express slots, 2 gigabit ethernet connections, and support for up to 12 SATA drives--which lets you use multiple RAID configurations if you want. Depending on what graphics cards you choose, you could have up to 8 monitors. And AMD leaves a lot of settings unlocked so you can overclock to your heart's content. Best of all, the board is upgradable to AMD's quad-core processors, code-named Barcelona, due out in the second half of 2007.

AMD expects the platform to perform best with the forthcoming Windows Vista operating system.

FYI, the configuration of the AMD Quad FX system we received was as follows: two 3-GHz Athlon 64 FX-74 CPUs, 4GB of Corsair PC2-8500 DDR2 memory, two 150GB Western Digital Raptor drives in RAID 0 plus a 500GB WD drive, two NVidia 7900 GTX SLI graphics boards, a 1000-watt power supply, and a rewritable DVD drive.

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