Tech Shout!

On November 29, AMD launched the much awaited “Quad FX Platform”, which features AMD’s Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) architecture. The Quad FX Platform is the first dual-socket, multi-core desktop PC platform which has been designed to take advantage of the enhancements in Windows Vista Ultimate. It is no wonder then that AMD regards it as the supreme platform for people who love to mega-task.

The new AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors power the Quad FX platform. In fact, the AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors share AMD’s socket F with Opteron processors. Each Athlon 64 FX-7 series processor is equipped with 2×1MB of L2 cache.

The AMD Quad FX Platform promises to offer enthusiasts absolute performance, flexibility, and customization by including features like twelve SATA controllers designed to enable up to nine terabytes of storage using currently available drive technologies (for over 450 high-definition movies), and increased spacing between PCI-E slots to accommodate up to four high-performance graphics cards.

Something great about the AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors is the fact that it does not require registered DDR2 memory. Quad FX systems will also be compatible with AMD’s upcoming quad-core processors for a total of eight processor cores.

In addition, Nvidia is the chipset and multi-GPU launch partner for the Quad FX platform. The GeForce 8 series of graphics processing units and the nForce 680a media and communications processor have been used in the new platform, which will help deliver an ideal solution for mega-tasking enthusiasts.

Initially, Quad FX-based systems will be available with dual-core processors. The Quad FX series include the Athlon 64 FX-74, FX-72 and FX-70.

The AMD Quad FX Platform promises to offer enthusiasts absolute performance, flexibility, and customization by including features like twelve SATA controllers designed to enable up to nine terabytes of storage using currently available drive technologies (for over 450 high-definition movies), and increased spacing between PCI-E slots to accommodate up to four high-performance graphics cards.

AMD claims infinite options with the new platform to tweak the custom systems, including the ability to drive four or even eight monitors at the same time when using up to four PCI-E graphics cards.

The new AMD Athlon 64 FX-70, FX-72, and FX-74 dual-core processors will be available in pairs at a price of $599 (Rs. 26,764); $799 (Rs. 35,699); and $999 (Rs. 44,635) respectively for PIB (Processor in Box).

AMD Athlon 64 FX-70 series dual-core processors are expected to be available world-wide by early 2007.