If you like four how about a 2 x 2?
Posted by Kathleen Maher on January 16th 2006 | Discuss
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AMD just announced its long-awaited dual-core Athlon 64 FX-60. Long-awaited not because it is late but because there is such a pent-up demand for it in the enthusiast community. You can expect to see this part fly off the shelves.
The demand for high performance in PC games and digital media content has steadfastly escalated, challenging Moore's Law while reviews have shown the AMD Athlon 64 dual-core processors outshining the competition. So the 64 FX-60 dual-core processor will take its place as the highest performing dual-core consumer processor from AMD. The company claims it is showing an average 34% improvement on overall digital media performance and an eye-popping 80% faster performance on certain benchmarks over similar single-core processors.
|
Resolution |
3Dmark05 |
AA (no AF) |
|
1024 x 768 |
>12,351 |
Off |
|
1024 x 768 |
>11,925 |
On |
|
1600 x 1200 |
>11,316 |
Off |
|
1600 x 1200 |
>10,616 |
On |
|
Table 1. Dual-core and dual GPU = big benchmarks. |
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We've been playing with, er, testing one of the systems with an SLI mobo and twin GF7800GTX 512s. The CPUs are running at 2.61 GHz backed up with 2 GBytes of RAM. Out of the box, without any tweaking, the system delivered as shown in Table 1 (above).
Does speed kill?
Experientially it was better than the scores might indicate. We ran COD2, MOH, and "Quake4" at 1600 x 1200 x 32 with everything at max and the game play was smooth, fast, and the images amazing. And although we thought we'd cream the enemies, the unencumbered second CPU for AI gave them more power than we were used to—so much for the benefits of threading. We also ran some older games like "Splinter Cell" and "Ghost Recon," and once again the play was smooth, fast, and looked great.
Shush
Not only does it run great, it runs quiet. There is a special mode you can put the system in when you're not blasting soldiers or aliens that drops the power a bit and slows down the fans. It is remarkably quiet in that mode.
Affordable?
The Athlon 2.61 GHz 64 FX-60 dual-core processor is available now, worldwide, and is priced at $1,031 in 1,000-unit PIB quantities. (For pricing details see www.amd.com/pricing). Contrast that to Intel's dual-core 3.46-GHz Pentium processor 955 Extreme Edition CPU (for enthusiast PCs), formerly code-named Presler, selling for $999, which is a remarkable occurrence. Intel: the higher frequency, lower cost part—perhaps it's a recognition of the performance gap (Table 2).
|
Specifications |
AMD FX-60 |
Intel 955 |
|
Watts |
110 |
130 |
|
Transistors |
233 |
376 |
|
Die (mm2) |
199 |
140 |
|
Process (nm) |
90 |
65 |
|
Table 2. AMD—smaller, faster, more expensive. |
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Lots of friends
When you have a winning product, as AMD has now for about three years running, you collect friends, and AMD now has plenty. In fact the company has about 85 of the top 100 companies in the Forbes Global 2000 or their subsidiaries using AMD64 technology-based systems to run their enterprise applications.
They also have a lot more OEMs now too. In North America ABS, Alienware, CyberPower, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic, iBuyPower (AFT), Might Micro, Mighty Micro, Monarch, Overdrive PC, Polywell, Velocity Micro, Voodoo PC, XI Computer, Zipzoomfly, and ZT Group have announced new systems with the FX60, and in Europe Evesham and Mesh have signed up.
Heresy
Is nothing sacred? What is this world coming to? Apple goes to Intel and Dell goes to AMD É Dell goes to AMD?
Well, Piper Jaffray analyst Les Santiago upgraded AMD to "outperform" from "market perform" and raised the price target on the "high likelihood" of Dell signing up as an AMD customer this year.
"Based on conversations with our sources in the PC supply chain, on recent press reports suggesting that Asian ODMs are developing AMD-based systems for Dell, and on distributor comments noting shortage of AMD processors due to the possibility of Dell building AMD processor inventory, we strongly believe that Dell will start AMD-based system shipments as early as second half 2006," wrote the analyst in a recent research note.
A conservative scenario for AMD's penetration into Dell during the first year of introduction is 10% in servers, 5% in desktops, and 3% in portables, Santiago said. For full-year 2007, he estimates that AMD's share of Dell's shipment for servers, desktops, and portables should climb to 20%, 10%, and 6%, respectively.
The research analyst believes that a successful ramp of AMD's fab 36 facility in Dresden will significantly increase the company's capacity and provide major OEMs such as Dell improved confidence in AMD's ability to meet supply requirements.
Santiago raised his fiscal 2006 earnings per share estimate for AMD (post the spin-off of its Spansion unit) to $1.83 from 71 cents. He published fiscal 2007 estimates for "AMD prime" of earnings of $2.26 per share on our revenue of $6.31 billion. He raised the price target to $45 from $26.
Quad this, baby
Well now, if Dell does go for AMD, I guess we can expect to see a quad
AIB AMD system from Dell by fall, no? Maybe it will be a Crossfire system?
