AMD Quad FX platform
AMD Quad FX (also known as 4x4 or quad Father ) is a dual-processor platform from AMD in response to Intel's Core 2 and Xeon processors with four cores. As was still an appropriate product from AMD (AMD Phenom ) in development, this new platform has been created to also be able to offer four processor cores for the mass market. The platform was not officially offered in Europe, which was obviously not planned with the Asus L1N64 -SLI WS is, however, offered one of the few motherboards for this platform by German merchants.
Technology
In principle, it is a dual-processor platform based on the AMD Opteron with base F. However, no Registered memory modules are required. As processors special versions of the AMD Athlon 64 FX are used, which now also dominate the operation as a dual processor.
Another feature of the Quad FX platform, the four PEG slots which allow up to four graphics cards can be operated simultaneously. As chipset NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI is used, the NVIDIA has developed especially for the Quad FX platform. Thus one can use NVIDIA SLI technology for connecting multiple graphics cards.
Since each of the two Athlon 64 FX processors has its own dual -channel memory controller, which are connected via the NUMA concept, at least four memory modules are necessary for the full performance.
Criticisms
Since the process scheduler of Microsoft Windows XP has problems with the NUMA concept, Quad FX can not achieve impressive performance under Windows XP. When using Microsoft Windows Vista with a customized scheduler Quad FX can be rather convincing. However, the high power consumption of the system is a major point of criticism. The chipset and the two processors together have more than 300 watts of power. A quiet cooling is therefore difficult to achieve. Furthermore, keep in AMD critics to have created with Quad FX a temporary solution, because you would not have otherwise competitive.
Future
AMD stressed that on the Quad FX platform in future AMD Phenom FX processors with four cores will be usable, so you can have a total of eight processor cores. Sometime in 2007, they presented, however, a further development for this platform. However, the product support for the existing platform will remain maintained.
In the future, sets the resources in the development rather on the successor to the " Spider platform ". The " Spider platform " is entirely based on AMD technology, even so the chipset is from AMD and there are graphics cards in the ATI Radeon HD 3000 series in Crossfire mode to use.