Athlon 64: Platform support
Chipsets and motherboards are in short supply for the Athlon 64 compared to the situation when the original Athlon was launched. Similarly, everything is at an early stage as regards memory. Registered DDR400 modules -- which the Athlon 64 FX-51 requires -- are still very rare, although this situation may soon be rectified. Kingston is the first memory vendor to support the new AMD platform.
As far as operating system support is concerned, AMD will be pleased with the numerous Linux variants that already support its 64-bit architecture. Toward end of the year, the situation could improve further, as Microsoft plans to deliver an Athlon-64-optimised version of Windows XP Professional. The AMD ‘white box´ supplied for our tests came with a ‘pre-beta´ version of 64-bit Windows.
The first 64-bit applications are likely to be 3D games. Unreal Tournament 2004 is already optimised for the Athlon 64 family. Farcry, from German game developer Crytek (which sells through Ubisoft) should also be available as a 64-bit version. Also, Half Life 2, keenly awaited by many hardcore gamers, will likewise be optimised for the 64-bit AMD platform, it is rumoured.
Adventure in the South Seas: German game developer Crytek plans to optimise Farcry for the Athlon 64.
It will take longer for business and professional applications to migrate to 64-bit versions. That may not be too bad, though, as the Athlon 64 -- in contrast to arch-rival Intel´s Itanium -- also runs 32-bit applications very fast. So fast that Intel was compelled to announce the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition -- a souped-up 3.2GHz P4 with 2MB of Level 3 cache.
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