It's as fast as we imagined, but we wish AMD's new dual-core chip played better with other computer parts out of the gate.

Hot on the heels of Intel's second-generation dual-core Extreme Edition 955 chip comes AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60. More than just a speed bump to AMD's ultra-high-end FX line, the Athlon 64 FX-60 features two processing cores, bringing the FX series into the modern multicore era.

Upside
Now that AMD's highest-end processor is dual core, we can paint a more straightforward desktop CPU picture. It was previously hard to explain that the Athlon 64 FX-57 was only a single-core CPU yet cost more than AMD's top-of-the-line dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4800+. Now gamers and enthusiasts that invest in an ultra-high-end FX-60 chip can take advantage of all the forthcoming games and applications due to incorporate multicore optimisations. But the FX-60 is not merely an insurance policy for the future; our early tests show the FX-60 is lightning-fast on today's apps, as well.

Application performance
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

BAPCo SysMark 2004 rating

 Â

BAPCo SysMark 2004 Internet-content-creation rating

 Â

BAPCo SysMark 2004 office-productivity rating

 Â

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz)

281 

353 

224 

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz)

262 

320 

214 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz)

256 

308 

213 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz)

252 

303 

210 

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz)

243 

295 

200 

Intel Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz)

238 

280 

202 

CPU-limited custom Half-Life 2 demo (in fps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Half-Life 2 1,024x768, no AA no AF

 Â

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz)

140.6 

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz)

138.2 

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz)

130.4 

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz)

125 

Intel Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz)

106.3 

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz)

104.4 

On our current suite of single-core and multithreaded benchmarks, the Athlon 64 FX-60 beats all other desktop chips on almost every test, including Intel's new Pentium Processor Extreme Edition 955 introduced at the end of December (the lone exception is a statistical tie with the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on Half-Life 2).

Of particular note are our DivX 6.1 tests. The recent update to that application saw the introduction of multithreaded code. While Intel's Extreme Edition 955 chip did well on the straight video encoding, it couldn't compete with the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on multitasking. The Athlon 64 FX-60 not only beat Intel's chip by a larger margin on the multitasking, it also trumped the Extreme Edition 955 on the encode portion.

We're curious to see how both of the new chips will perform on upcoming multithreaded games designed to take advantage of dual-core CPUs processing threads, but the early results favour AMD as strongly now as they did a few months back in our dual-core CPU prizefight.

Multimedia tests (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Sorenson Squeeze 4

Apple iTunes 4.7.1.30

Adobe Photoshop CS

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz)

207

102

132

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz)

219

135

140

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz)

222

110

146

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz)

224

115

151

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (3.2GHz)

237

132

156

Intel Pentium D 840 (3.2GHz)

237

129

163

DivX 6.1 tests (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Multitasking--McAfee VirusScan and DivX 6.1 encoding

DivX 6.1 encoding

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6GHz)

266

247

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (2.4GHz)

283

266

Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz)

312

255

Downside
As is often the case with new hardware introductions, the FX-60 is not immune to issues and incompatibilities. We received a number of FX-60 PCs in the weeks leading up to the end of the press embargo, and to date, none of them has completed all of our tests successfully. Some vendors claim the troubles have to do with Nvidia's graphics drivers, others point to conflicts with Windows. We have faith things will sort themselves out eventually, but since the Athlon 64 FX-60 is ostensibly a gamer's chip, those problems will likely give pause to the early adopting gamers most likely to purchase it at launch.

Outlook
Assuming the Athlon 64 FX-60 will soon learn to play nice in the larger computing ecosystem, our early take is that AMD's desktop performance dominance continues. That said, we're only now starting to see the true proliferation of multithreaded apps that can take advantage of a dual-core CPU. We'll revisit our benchmarks accordingly soon, at which point we can present the full dual-core CPU picture.

AMD test bed:
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard; Nvidia Nforce-4 SLI chipset; Crucial 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX (PCIe); WDC WD740GD-00FLA2 74GB 10,000rpm SATA; Windows XP Professional SP2; Antec 550w power supply

Intel test bed:
Intel 975X Express chipset motherboard; Intel 975X Express chipset; Crucial 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX (PCIe); WDC WD740GD-00FLA2 74GB 10,000rpm SATA; Windows XP Professional SP2; Antec 550w power supply