(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
 |
Sorenson Squeeze 4 | |
Apple iTunes 4.7.1.30 | |
Adobe Photoshop CS |
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
|
Multitasking--McAfee VirusScan and DivX 6.1 encoding | |
DivX 6.1 encoding |
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
14%
7%
