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It's AMD's turn today to bring joy and glee to every gamer's heart -- IF you have the moolah to be able to afford it!
AMD today announced the Quad FX, long-anticipated for 4x4 enthusiasts. The Quad FX platform features AMD’s Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) architecture to deliver two dual-core processors for the most demanding users. AMD wants to cater the Quad FX platform towards megatasking enthusiasts.
Quad FX based systems will initially be available with dual-core processors. Launching today with Quad FX are the Athlon 64 FX-74, FX-72 and FX-70. Additionally, Quad FX systems will be compatible with AMD’s upcoming quad-core processors for a total of eight processor cores.
Previews can be found at the sites here:
AMD claims Quad FX is needed because “The emergence of a dual-socket consumer
platform is critical for enthusiasts who demand systems that offer the sheer
power and system headroom to let the enthusiast configure this system to his or
her heart’s content, and launch a fleet of entertainment and productivity
applications at once,” said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president, Desktop
Division, AMD. “AMD is redefining performance by enabling our customers to take
advantage of the amazing megatasking capability of two AMD Athlon 64 FX-70
series processors in the AMD Quad FX Platform.”
Joining AMD with the
launch of Quad FX is NVIDIA. NVIDIA today is also launching its nForce 680a MCP
for Quad FX systems. With the nForce 680a MCP Quad FX systems feature a total of
56 PCIe lanes and 12 links. This comes out to four PCIe x16 slots with two
full-speed and two half-speed slots. Eight additional PCIe x1 lanes are
available for other peripherals, slots and etc… Up to 20 PCI slots are
supported, though there may be slot placement issues on
motherboards.
Plenty of I/O options will be available on nForce 680a
based Quad FX motherboards. NVIDIA’s nForce 680a supports a total of 12 SATA
3.0Gbps ports and four PATA devices across two channels. RAID levels 0, 1, 0 +
1, 5 and JBOD are supported with the integrated SATA controller.
Plenty
of networking options are available with the nForce 680a MCP. Four Gigabit
Ethernet controllers are available with the nForce 680a MCP, though its up to
the board manufacturer to implement it. Nevertheless, the four Gigabit Ethernet
controllers support NVIDIA’s FirstPacket, DualNet, Teaming and TCP/IP offload
technologies.
Other notable features of the nForce 680a MCP include up to
20 High-speed USB ports and high definition audio.
Pricing of Athlon 64 FX-70 series start at $599 for a pair of FX-70’s and top out at $999 for a pair of FX-74’s. Availability of Quad FX systems and parts are expected in early 2007.
Currently, Asus is the only known motherboard manufacturer to have a
Quad FX motherboard ready. DailyTech previously revaled images of ASUS’
upcoming Quad FX motherboard.
Also check out Anandtech's review here.
Source: DailyTech
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