Daily Tech: 4x4 is pointless

[Hard Ball]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3552

That?s over $2000 in hardware without counting four sticks of memory to take full advantage of dual-channel and NUMA, keyboard, mouse, monitor, optical drive and enclosure. Last I checked but most enthusiasts are looking for the most bang for their buck and close to $3000 is not within the bang for buck price range.

So that brings us to, what?s the point of AMD?s 4x4 enthusiast platform? Insanely expensive and there?s only so much gain one can achieve. It would appear AMD?s so-called enthusiast platform will be out of reach of most enthusiasts.

I tend to agree with them. 4x4 doesn't seem to serve any real purpose except as a short term stopgap in order for them not to look to bad in terms of gaming platform for this holiday season, prior to the launch of K8L. And it's really a shame that not too many in this forum will be able to afford the 4x4 system, since the performance/price ratio for this platform is simply not there.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Daily Tech should stick to news.

 

[Avalon]

It just seems like a bunch of drivel crying about how it's too expensive. The thing that the writer seems to be forgetting is that people can and do shell out that sort of money for systems, so it's not completely pointless. Sure, I would never buy it, and it's probably the farthest from best bang for the buck, but others will be interested.

Daily Tech should stick to news.

Agreed. If they start writing more "articles" like this, they are going to start sounding a bit like the INQ.

 

[hectorsm]

Here it mentions that a couple of models will be offered below $1000.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33268

Unless you are doing some kind of DC, I don't think 4 cores will be of much benefit. I think dual cores will meet most peoples need for a while.

Edit: oops... it's 2 dual cores not 4 cores.

 

[atom]

Agreed. If they start writing more "articles" like this, they are going to start sounding a bit like the INQ.

It's not an "article" it's part of his blog. If you don't want to hear people's opinions, maybe quit reading blogs?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Whether it's $1k or $2k for the processors, it's still 2 dual-core CPUs for now. That's not going to help many people.

 

[dexvx]

Someone still explain to me WTF the difference is between a 4x4 and a DC Opteron system.

 

[Pederv]

4 Card SLI video setup

 

[shady28]

Actually the inquirer article is pretty informative.

The 4x4 concept is really illustrated in this comment :

"...you can encode a DVD while playing UT2007, it won't bring the system to its knees making both unusable. AMD demonstrated that many times, with various things running in parallel, and not trivial ones at that."

The big question in my mind is, with higher end x2s (or for that matter, Pentium D dual cores, core duos, and core 2 duos) already pushing well over 100fps in the vast majority of games - exactly what do we need more single tasking performance for???

What is nice is being able to play a game on one monitor, while watching a java stock ticker in another window, downloading something in Azureus, and burning a DVD or CD from iTunes or some other app in the background. We can do this to some extent now, but push it beyond a couple of intense tasks and you start getting problems with saturated busses. If 4x4 can allow you to smoothly do 2 or 3 intense tasks at once, it will have a big market.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

What is the point of having so many cores and so much graphics processing power? I mean think about it, do we need to run our games at 100 fps +. I can understand encoding and rendering, but that would then mean that the 4x4 is only for professionals and gamers with deep pockets. Not for the average computer user.

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: dexvx
Someone still explain to me WTF the difference is between a 4x4 and a DC Opteron system.

SLI/quadSLI possible, no ECC memory required. Theres your differences.

 

[formulav8]

You mean no Buffered Memory requirements. ECC is Optional in Opty, Buffered is Required.



Jason

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: formulav8
You mean no Buffered Memory requirements. ECC is Optional in Opty, Buffered is Required.



Jason

Show me some buffered memory that's non-ECC though.