New AMD Chipset From Nvidia

[Phoenix64d]

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce_600a_features.html

From what I can see, it supports 2 dual cores and 4 PCI-E cards at once...pretty fancy. I just wonder if it's that big of a deal considering the impending release of AMD's Am2+'s/AM3's...this only supports the FX chips. It doesn't support DDR3 either. Who knows, maybe they just haven't released the full specs yet and will only do so after AMD unveils its super chip.

[Skorp]

That platform (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2879) is actually a year old.

It's a very good idea, and it scales quite brilliantly. The main flaw is that it's still using those old K8 processors, and it puts out an enormous amount of heat. Still slower than a single socket Intel quad in some cases, and while it isn't the drubbing which Core 2 lends the X2 on a single socket, the heat and power make it too inefficient to consider.

The Barcelona version will be an eight-core monster, and assuming you have the AM2+ version of the motherboard (which will likely be ATi based now), the cores will be able to use dual-memory controllers per socket (four controllers total) to increase bandwidth, and power saving measures as well. Unused cores will lower their clock speed and turn off.

I don't know how a dual-barcelona OctoFather will fare against Intel's V8. That system is a dual-socket dual-quad-core FBDIMM beast. It's going to have far more expensive and slower memory, that's all I know. The reviews floating around the internet are horridly unfair - the quad-core systems they compare Skulltrail to (that being V8) have half the RAM and one less graphics card. That hasn't stopped them showing off 3DMark results side-by-side...

[Phoenix64d]

That platform is actually a year old.

Hmph, that's embarassing. I must be blind -- I go to Nvidia all of the time, and yet somehow I miss this...hmmm. There only look like there are a couple of boards out there with this chipset on them, maybe that's why.

It looks like it might be used for servers, or for some really high end 3d stuff. I take it that it wasn't a big success?

[jdrom17]

Quite a flop. I don't think anybody really bought it.

[Skorp]

It would have appealed to the workstation / gamer crowd, if only Intel quad cores hadn't been just as fast / faster while drawing half the power. The Barcy version will be much better.