4x4 vs. Kentsfield

[HurleyBird]

Since I don't see any other topics of this nature, I figured I'd start one.


4x4:
3.0GHz
Four memory channels
Support for up to four video cards
Lots of room for expansion
Upgradable to eight core system next gen
High to very high power consumption

Kentsfield:
2.66GHz
Two memory channels
Support for up to two video cards
Medium room for expansion
Smaller upgrade potential (stuck at four cores)
Medium-low to high power consumption


Personally, I would take the 4x4 setup. Dual memory banks along with a %12 clock speed advantage should make the platform about equal with Kentsfield performance wise (that might change when both platforms are overclocked -- Kentsfield will probably overclock more, but scale worse, as the CPU will become more bandwidth starved at higher clocks), while giving better upgradability and expandability, and if outfitted with four video cards, the 4x4 system will, of course, be better at gaming. I also don't care about power consumption that much, as long as the PC remains relatively quite.

Thoughts?

 

[BladeVenom]

Price?

 

[HurleyBird]

Assuming everything is equal, price should be pretty even, a little bit more expensive for the AMD platform due to the extra memory needed. Fully expanded, 4x4 would cost quite a bit more than a Kentsfield computer.

 

[YoungGun21]

Where did you get that Kentsfield is stuck at 4 cores and only has a medium upgradibility(SP?)? Same thing for the 4x4 system, how do you know about its upgradibility?

Kentsfield will run on the P965 chipset...So who is to say that Intel won't continue to develop S775 processors?

4x4 will require a whole new socket. I would agree though that AMD wouldn't just abandon a high-tech socket.

As for price, Kentsfield is going to be $600+ where as I can't see 4x4 being anywhere below $1000.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 - $851 (2.4GHz)
Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 - $999 (2.66GHz)
High-End Motherboard for High-End CPU - $200+

I am guessing that 4x4 will launch at a higher price-point. The motherboards will be more complex. Will this be relevant, I am not sure as most people looking to go into this won't let a few hundred dollars stand in the way of ultimate performance. Only time, pricing & benchmarks will tell.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: YoungGun21
Where did you get that Kentsfield is stuck at 4 cores and only has a medium upgradibility(SP?)? Same thing for the 4x4 system, how do you know about its upgradibility?

Kentsfield will run on the P965 chipset...So who is to say that Intel won't continue to develop S775 processors?

No, I said medium *expandibility*, lower upradeability. We already know that quad core K8Ls will be able to drop into the 4x4 socket, so we know that a 4x4 system is scalable to eight cores. Intel on the other hand is planning on introducing two new sockets; one for desktop and one for server, and it is likely that an octo core chip will plug into the new socket, and not 775. It is possible that Intel will introduce an octo core chip using socket 775, altough, IMO, it's not likely to see the light of day as such a chip would be completely bandwidth bottlenecked to the point of being completely dominated by a K8L based 4x4 solution in a way that would make A64's whipping of P4, or Core 2's whipping of A64 look good.

Originally posted by: YoungGun21
As for price, Kentsfield is going to be $600+ where as I can't see 4x4 being anywhere below $1000.

The highest end 4x4 package (FX-74) will match the highest end Kentsfield in price ($1000) I'm not sure about the pricing of FX-72 or 70 packages but they should be in line with lower clocked Kentsfields.

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
I am guessing that 4x4 will launch at a higher price-point. The motherboards will be more complex. Will this be relevant, I am not sure as most people looking to go into this won't let a few hundred dollars stand in the way of ultimate performance. Only time, pricing & benchmarks will tell.

Yeah, while the processors will be competitive in price expect to pay more on motherboards and memory for the 4x4 platform. Of course, for the price difference you do get about twice the expandability, which is a good thing if you need it.

 

[n19htmare]

neither. meant for "the enthusiast" "the gamer" but what game supports 4 cores or 2 sockets... like 2 games total?

 

[n19htmare]

Originally posted by: HurleyBird

Originally posted by: YoungGun21
Where did you get that Kentsfield is stuck at 4 cores and only has a medium upgradibility(SP?)? Same thing for the 4x4 system, how do you know about its upgradibility?

Kentsfield will run on the P965 chipset...So who is to say that Intel won't continue to develop S775 processors?

No, I said medium expandibility. We already know that quad core K8Ls will be able to drop into the 4x4 socket, so we know that a 4x4 system is scalable to eight cores. Intel on the other hand is planning on introducing two new sockets; one for desktop and one for server, and it is likely that an octo core chip will plug into the new socket, and not 775. It is possible that Intel will introduce an octo core chip using socket 775, altough, IMO, it's not likely to see the light of day as such a chip would be completely bandwidth bottlenecked to the point of being completely dominated by a K8L based 4x4 solution.

Originally posted by: YoungGun21
As for price, Kentsfield is going to be $600+ where as I can't see 4x4 being anywhere below $1000.

The highest end 4x4 package (FX-74) will match the highest end Kentsfield in price ($1000) I'm not sure about the pricing of FX-72 or 70 packages but they should be in line with lower clocked Kentsfields.

Originally posted by: theprodigalrebel
I am guessing that 4x4 will launch at a higher price-point. The motherboards will be more complex. Will this be relevant, I am not sure as most people looking to go into this won't let a few hundred dollars stand in the way of ultimate performance. Only time, pricing & benchmarks will tell.

Yeah, while the processors will be competitive in price expect to pay more on motherboards and memory for the 4x4 platform. Of course, for the price difference you do get about twice the expandability, which is a good thing if you need it.

we were also told that 4x4 will be AM2......

 

[HurleyBird]

By who, the INQ or AMD? Anyways, now it looks to be pretty solid that 4x4 is going to be socket F without registered memory.

 

[Maximilian]

Kentsfield. It will be more practical/problem free.

 

[n19htmare]

How are you suppose to run All four cards in SLI? is there a 4-card bridge?

 

[harpoon84]

They both have their strengths. I suspect Kentsfield will have a slight edge in performance (and should overclock further, 65nm vs 90nm), and runs much cooler (110W vs 250W), but as you said 4x4 is upgradeable to future 8 core systems through 2 QC K8L chips.

In reality I won't be getting Kentsfield nor 4x4 anytime soon, the cost is prohibitive and I don't do anything atm that warrants a quad core.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: n19htmare
How are you suppose to run All four cards in SLI? is there a 4-card bridge?

Good question. I'm not sure how it's going to work (although since Nvidia itself is making the 4x4 chipset, it's logical to assume that Nvidia does have a way to make Quad-SLI work) but my guess would be that each card has one dongle, so the two sets of dongled cards would communicate with each other through PCI-E. It's also possible that we'll see some Nvidia cards with more than one SLI bridge. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some vendors sold '4x4' marketed video card bundles with extra bridges.

I suppose Nvidia could copy the way the GX2's connect in the following way: Sell video card 'bundles' so that each bundle has a card with one bridge, and another one with two bridges. on the card with two bridges, one dongle will connect both the cards in the 'bundle' while the other one connects to a secound 'bundle'.

The possibilities are almost endless, I just hope Nvidia chooses a more elegant implementation of quad-SLI for 4x4.

 

[DrMrLordX]

We all saw Kentsfield engineering samples in the wild in April, and it worked well then. If I had to choose between a known (Kentsfield) and an unknown (4x4) I'd go with the known. I don't really like the price on 4x4 anyway. I was under the impression that $1k was the price for the FX-70 package, not the FX-74 package btw.

 

[Furen]

I'd chose neither, both will be overpriced for a while yet.

Before Intel can make an octal-core CPU it needs to make a native quad-core part (so it can actually package them together while only putting two loads on the FSB) and I haven't seen anything about this before Nehalem, which will require a new socket because it will use a new interconnect. Kentsfield has a few advantages over 4x4: cheaper motherboards (which is somewhat negated by the expensive price point of the chips), lower power draw, and probably better performance.

On the AMD side: while Rev B supposedly will drop into "Quad-father" motherboards, you'll be missing a few of its key parts--multiple powerplanes and HT3. The HT3 links shouldn't be particularly important in a dual-socket system, but having 4 cores per socket may turn HT2.0 into a bottleneck. I'm also worried about AMD's ability to get decent yields at those clockspeeds. Another thing is, of course, the insane powerdraw of a two socket system. I do like the fact that there will be lots of PCI-E 16x (physical) slots but it's kind of a shame that there will be very few memory slots. I know it's hard to pack in so much stuff into a motherboard without making it insanely huge, but having to fill up all the memory slots to achieve decent performance is kind of lame, though I suppose you could run a single channel of DDR2 800 on each chip.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
I was under the impression that $1k was the price for the FX-70 package, not the FX-74 package btw.

That's what the pricing was originally planned at, but now it's the FX-74 which will end up costing $1K.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

so does 4x4 require fx chips or will it accept regular x2s

 

[Duvie]

I am going Kentsfield cause I can drop it in my current core 2 duo system now!!!

 

[Skott]

Originally posted by: Duvie
I am going Kentsfield cause I can drop it in my current core 2 duo system now!!!

Yeah, thats one advantage we know Kentsfield has over the 4x4. AMD has yet to say if a new mobo is needed for their 4x4 chips. Quite a few of the Conroe mobos are already QuadCore ready. But as far as performance goes its only speculation until AMD actually produces something. As things are right now I'd give the nod to Kentsfield.

 

[n19htmare]

Originally posted by: HurleyBird

Originally posted by: n19htmare
How are you suppose to run All four cards in SLI? is there a 4-card bridge?

Good question. I'm not sure how it's going to work (although since Nvidia itself is making the 4x4 chipset, it's logical to assume that Nvidia does have a way to make Quad-SLI work) but my guess would be that each card has one dongle, so the two sets of dongled cards would communicate with each other through PCI-E. It's also possible that we'll see some Nvidia cards with more than one SLI bridge. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some vendors sold '4x4' marketed video card bundles with extra bridges.

I suppose Nvidia could copy the way the GX2's connect in the following way: Sell video card 'bundles' so that each bundle has a card with one bridge, and another one with two bridges. on the card with two bridges, one dongle will connect both the cards in the 'bundle' while the other one connects to a secound 'bundle'.

The possibilities are almost endless, I just hope Nvidia chooses a more elegant implementation of quad-SLI for 4x4.

Launch is almost here and we don't have a clue about the 4x4. I do know that 2 Pci-e lanes are 16x and the other 2 are 8x.... how SLI is gonna work on that is still to be determined.

Lets just wait and see how things turn out..... we all know 4x4 was a quick patch, i just hope it was the right move.

Originally posted by: tanishalfelven
so does 4x4 require fx chips or will it accept regular x2s

Special chips. They will come in pairs and cost I think between 800-1000 for pair.
Current X2 chips are AM2, 4x4 is a whole new socket.

 

[gramboh]

$1000 for FX-74 which is 2x dual core 3.0GHz A64 chips with 2MB cache each? I'll believe it when I see it. It will be pretty funny if its Socket F as well.

 

[VooDooAddict]

I imagine it's going to be possible to drop a 2.6Ghz Kentsfield and a 8800GTS in a UltraFly with a beefy powersupply on a G965 MicroATX board is possible.

I wish there were microATX P965 Express boards for better overclocking potential, but I've only seen G965 boards in MicroATX.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

I don't see how anyone would benefit from 8 cores vs 4... Especially at those speeds too. I mean cmon...

 

[cmdrdredd]

I vote for neither...since I honestly don't stress my E6400 yet.

 

[HurleyBird]

Originally posted by: SpeedZealot369
I don't see how anyone would benefit from 8 cores vs 4... Especially at those speeds too. I mean cmon...

Heh, at least you're future proofed.

I don't know about you, but just thinking about a 4x4 system with 8 K8L cores, 4 next gen video cards, 8 24" SED displays (if those are out by the time K8L is available), 8 gigs of RAM, and a couple terabytes of storage is juat about enough to make me orgasm