Final thoughts
We still have our Windows Vista testing to complete, but now we've had a chance to put Quad FX up against Core 2 Quad in exactly the environment AMD is claiming it's aimed at, our conclusions can be a bit more bullish. Quad FX may be good at 3D rendering. Indeed the Opteron platform it's based on had all but taken over that market, until the Core Microarchitecture arrived. But it's now very clear that Quad FX is not the panacea for Core 2 Quad some had hoped for. In virtually every benchmark we've tried so far, AMD's quad-core offering has been beaten by Intel's; it's as simple as that.
With the FX-7x series processor, AMD's Quad FX just doesn't have enough real-world performance to compete. It may have umpteen architectural advantages but, presently, those just don't appear to be giving it any real-world benefit over Core 2 Quad. Throughout our dealings with AMD during this review process, it has become clear that Quad FX is more a proof of concept than a platform intended to provide stiff competition. AMD is setting this up ready for the 'native quad-core' processors it has planned for later in 2007, and that's a good thing. It looks like those couldn't come any sooner, as the FX-70s are shaping up to be an AMD era which perhaps we'd all rather forget.
