Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 16, 2007 3:04 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Affordable Quad Core: AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 vs. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700
AMD doesn't have any quad-core CPUs on the market today, but you can get four cores in a single motherboard by going with a Quad FX platform. AMD's attempt at building a enthusiast class dual socket, dual core platform is far from the most elegant solution in the world, but it does provide an interesting upgrade path. The Quad FX platform uses Socket-1207 CPUs and will be able to be upgraded to dual quad-core chips when they are available, giving you eight cores on a desktop motherboard. Intel has a similar offering called V8, but the AMD Quad FX platform uses standard desktop DDR2 memory which makes it infinitely more attractive.
The problem with Quad FX is that the motherboard is expensive, the whole platform consumes a great deal of power, and you can just as easily get a single socket, quad-core solution from Intel for less money. We haven't revisited Quad FX vs. Quad-Core since AMD introduced the platform, and since then there have been some price cuts on both sides of the fence. AMD now sells two Socket-1207 Athlon 64 FX-74 processors (3.0GHz) at $599 for the pair, making it quite cost competitive with Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6700 ($530).
If we forget about the added cost of a Quad FX motherboard for the moment, how do the two similarly priced processors stack up? The chart below shows the performance advantage/disadvantage the Q6700 holds compared to the FX-74:
That's not very pretty for AMD. The Athlon 64 FX-74 ends up being 1.1% faster in Cinebench but on average, the Q6700 is 14.1% faster than the more expensive Quad FX platform. The only benefit you get with Quad FX is the ability to eventually upgrade it to eight cores, but in our opinion for the majority of users the upgrade path is simply not enough to justify the means to get there.
Taking advantage of four cores on the desktop is tough enough today, and if you really need 8 cores today buying a platform that will support it in the future isn't going to help make your applications faster now. The market for Quad FX continues to be limited and our original recommendation from the first Quad FX review stands: you're better off with Intel's quad-core.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
68 Comments
View All Comments
gigahertz20 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Ahhh man I loved the article but I was hoping for some overclocking benchmarks, very disappointing. I wanted to see an overclocked Q6600 vs. overclocked e6850, there were reports the E6850 can OC up to around 4GHz. I was hoping this article would show us some OC results. Is this planned for later or something?cpeter38 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Another Ditto!!!!Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
and another!All the early Conroe reviews had OC numbers. And yes, by now we realize that as far as dual-cores go, any of the new parts should overclock about the same. It's really important to a lot of users however to know how the overclocking of these new parts matches up to the quad-core part.
Frumious1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
You've got numbers http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3020&am...">like this that have quad core hitting 3.60 GHz with appropriate cooling. Q6600 should easily hit 3.0-3.3 GHz with a reasonable HSF, and if you want something high-end like the Ultra-120 Extreme, maybe even 3.60 GHz (9x400). One more reason to go quad - just mind the energy bills!Sunrise089 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
yes, but what about if the dual-core part is overclocked to 4.0ghz?Frumious1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Given that overall performance goes to 2.4 GHz quad core over 3.0 GHz dual core (a 600 MHz difference), I can guarantee that a 3.6 GHz quad core would be better than 4.0 GHz dual core (a 400 MHz difference). That said, for gaming it really wouldn't matter much right now - no games even try to utilize more than two cores that I'm aware of. And don't even think about a 3.6 GHz overclocked quad core chip unless you have a beefy PSU!BikeDude - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link
Flight Simulator X SP1 adds multicore support and should benefit from additional (beyond dual) cores."As I stated previously, our multi-core support will take advantage of both 2 and 4 cores today, and more cores in the future when they become available."
(http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/f...">http://blogs.msdn.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/05/14/f...
I am a bit disappointed that Anandtech doesn't bench FSX. I also miss the compiler benchmarks they used to do. AMD used to do quite well in those... (I say this as someone who uses compilers, not as a former AMD fanboy which I probably am)
RamarC - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
anyone know what oc results i can expect with a p35-based mobo and a q6600? is 3.0ghz as easy to reach as it is with an e6600?ZDNetReader1 - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Ditto!! What he said!!MrKaz - Monday, July 16, 2007 - link
Price-wise, the only AMD/Intel competition we have here is between the FX-74 and the Q6700. Do keep in mind that as the FX-74 is a dual-socket configuration, the motherboard is a bit more expensive than what you can use with any of the single-socket quad-core Intel solutions.This is obviously true, but it’s also true that Intel motherboards for single socket VS AMD motherboards for single socket are also more expensive.
In my country equivalent ASUS AMD motherboard VS ASUS INTEL motherboard is around 30% to 50% cheaper.
Do keep that in mind too.