The First Quad Core AMD Platform
*THE WHOLE PRINCIPLE OF A QUAD CORE PROCESSOR IS QUITE SIMPLE.
IT IS FASCINATING THOUGH. ALL THEY DID WAS TO DUPLICATE A DUO CORE.
I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY PENTIUM SO FAR, MOSTLY AMD.
BUT ONE OF THE COOLEST THING IS TO PUT TWO QUAD CORE ON ONE MOTHER BOARD. AN Asus L1N64-SLI WS Motherboard WOULD DO THE JOB JUST FINE.
WITH SUCH POWER, WHAT WOULD THE TYPICAL PC HOME OWNER DO?
Even though ASUS is currently the only Quad FX motherboard manufacturer, the situation is destined to change soon. More manufacturers should be coming out with their own Quad FX motherboards in the coming months, and AMD should be introducing their own Quad FX chipset which will support Crossfire technology.
In order to fit in all of the features on the motherboard, smaller PCB dimensions were compromised. We weren’t too shocked about the board’s large size considering it comes with two Athlon 64 FX sockets and 4 PCI Express 16x slots integrated onto it. In addition, if four video cards is to even be a possibility, the board must have adequate space. Four DIMM slots are placed between the two CPU sockets. Each processor independently handles two DIMM slots, so with 4 modules of DDR2-800 memory installed, the theoretical memory bandwidth of the system is 25.6 GB/s. This is only a theoretical value that represents 100% efficiency. In a real-world situation, expect the actual bandwidth to be a smaller figure.
The cooling of the system is a major issue that ASUS seems to have taken into consideration when designing this board. There are a total of three fans on the motherboard. The two chipsets are cooled by connecting two heatpipes to a radiator that dissipates the heat.
www.hwupgrade.com/articles/print/cpu/10/