CPU/Mobo AMD: New Socket For Two Dual-Core Processors

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dipdude

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AMD Puts Pressure On Intel In PC Gaming With New Socket For Two Dual-Core Processors.
Advanced Micro Devices is going to fire back at Intel today in the enthusiast PC market. The Sunnyvale company will unveil a new socket for high-end computers today that will allow it to put two dual-core microprocessors side by side in a PC. The new 4x4 socket will help it compete for the speed crown with Intel, which is poised to launch its new Conroe desktop microprocessors in July.

"This is something we have worked on for a while based on customer feedback," said Brent Barry, director of brand marketing for AMD's FX series of gamer chips.

It's like Gillette adding four razor blades to its razors now. How many is enough? It could get confusing for gamers. But the techies will sort it out, much the same way they have with the Nvidia SLI and ATI Crossfire dual graphics cards: more is better.

While Intel's Conroe chips will allegedly take the performance crown from AMD's own dual-core FX series of microprocessors, AMD can claim leadership in terms of putting four cores into a single PC, allowing for more tasks to be done in parallel. Patrick Moorhead, vice president of global channel marketing, said the new socket would ship in the second half of 2006 and target the high-end gamer segment, which usually means high-priced.

AMD's Barry said that machines with the new sockets will be to run multithreaded games at better performance levels than Intel-based machines. He said that more game companies have begun to adapt their games to exploit multiple threads in a PC, allowing them to handle more tasks at the same time and thereby run much games faster and prettier for gamers.

The company expects to have one computer maker showing off the performance of the 4x4 socket today at its analyst briefing.
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Honestly, AMD are pushing it too far.

Whos gonna pay 2000$ for 2 FX Processors?

Its a new Socket, so i guess, only FX Processors will be released for it. which will be hell expensive...

And 4 Cores? Whos gonna use it? What your gonna run 4 PC's by Virtualisation on 1 Machine?

Or, is some1 gonna Encode a Video, Encode Sound, and play music and check his mail, and watch TV thru a TV Tuner, while playing a Game?

Yea right :rofl:
 
I think the logic is, AMD knows that they have already been pwned by the Conroes; and that their processors are really going to struggle against the Conroes....

So, what do they do? Hope that 2 FXs can outperform a single Conroe...

Really, this is pathetic.

I wonder who would make these motherboards; considering how many people would be able to afford such a high-end system.

And, can you imagine the power consumption? 125W TDP each for the FXs alone...
 
Well one possiblity is that this could be very useful in SLI/Crossfire. Some amount of the CPU overhead involved could be solved using two processors. I particularly feel that Quad SLI could be a big winner out of this. But the cost, oh yeah its not gonna be cheap. Lets wait and see.
 
Basically, AMD is publicly admitting to the fact that at least until K8L for desktops comes out (probably in H2 2007 or even 2008, for desktops), they will not have an answer to Conroe.

They are saying, they do not have a single processor to match a Conroe.

So, they are hoping that 2 of their processors can at least compete with a single Conroe.

But still, this has problems. Intel could at least theoretically counter this by releasing 2P desktop Woodcrest platforms. Of course, this might require a lot of tweaks, like regular DDR2 instead of FB-DIMMs for increased latency in low-throughput conditions. But, with Intel's resources, and Intel's clout and yields, this would be rather easy. And, AMD does NOT have any considerable lead in 2P bandwidth with HyperTransport; even if a single FSB is a bottleneck, Intel can use DIBs. And, Woodcrests are rather cheap, cheaper than Core 2 Extreme, IIRC. So, again Intel can beat them in the extreme high-end desktop space.

So what will AMD do then? Release an eight socket desktop platform to leverage their HT advantage? Something tells me Sharikou will be the only person to buy such a rig... :)
 
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