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Heavy Gear February 2007 • Vol.7 Issue 2 Page(s) 29 in print issue |
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AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 |
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Athlon 64 FX-74 $999 (per matched pair) AMD www.amd.com CPU Rating: 4 Specs: 3GHz clock speed, 2GHz HyperTransport, Socket 1207 organic LGA, 90nm SOI process, 4MB L2 cache (1MB L2 cache per core)  Now that multicore has established itself as a critical CPU architecture for everyone from the average consumer to the enthusiast, the race is on to pile more cores onto a single CPU. Or, in AMD’s case, the plan is to pile more CPUs onto the motherboard. The AMD Athlon 64 FX-70, FX-72, and FX-74 each include a pair of dual-core processors, rather than a single, quad-core chip. With its 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700, Intel beat AMD to the punch on the quad-core front. The Intel processor offers four cores on two dies and has 8MB of L2 cache. But AMD’s first shot at four cores is no slouch, either. The FX-74 matched pair rolls in with a 3GHz clock speed and 4MB of L2 cache (1MB of L2 cache to each core). It also has 256KB of L1 cache per processor; each core has 128KB split between instruction and data cache. The FX pairs have two 1GHz HyperTransport links and support memory up to DDR2-800 (PC2 6400). You can’t split the matched pair and put one of the processors into a board that supports your older FX processors, as the new chips are Socket 1207. AMD produces all three models on the 90nm SOI process at its Dresden, Germany Fab 30 plant. My testing motherboard was the Asus L1N64-SLI WS, which supports SLI. Rather than send us the processor/motherboard combo that makes up a standard review kit, AMD opted to build and send a full system. The test PC sported 4GB of Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-8500C5D DDR-2 memory, two 150GB Western Digital Raptors in RAID 0, and a 1,000W PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR power supply. Because of the prebuilt AMD system, my 3D benchmarks provide a little less than an apples-to-apples comparison with the QX6700: My Intel test system had a 1GB Evga Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2, while AMD’s system used two Nvidia GeForce 7900 GTXs in SLI. Even so, the QX6700 edged out the FX-74 in the CPU portions of most of our tests. Not surprisingly, the FX-74’s 3DMark06 score rolled in well above the Intel system’s score at 11103 and 8967, respectively. The 3DMark06 CPU scores paint a clearer picture, with the FX-74 posting 3822 to the QX6700’s 3830. In PCMark05’s CPU test, the FX-74 scored 7715 to the QX6700’s 8406. The FX-74 starts at an already fast clock speed of 3GHz. I overclocked it to 3.18GHz by raising the FSB. Keep in mind that the system relies on stock cooling, which means you would likely see a better overclock from more exotic cooling methods. AMD’s new processor pair trailed a little further behind its competitor at overclocked settings. The FX-74’s best Win-RAR score of 3:20 (minutes:seconds) could not beat the overclocked QX6700’s 2:39, and its PCMark05 CPU score of 7819 couldn’t match the QX6700’s 10367. That said, the Intel CPU had the benefit of an aftermarket HSF combo. The FX-74 competes with the Core 2 Extreme QX6700’s performance but doesn’t beat it. However, the FX-74 offers some expandability that makes it a tempting option. Once AMD releases true quad-core CPUs, you can use the same motherboard to fire up an eight-core PC. If you’re taking a long-term view, the FX-74 and the 4x4 platform isn’t a bad option.  by Joshua Gulick
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