AMD Quad FX - no thank you.

[Mehen]

Slightly below Core2 QX6700 performance wise and an absolute power hog.

AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 (3.0GHz x 4) 384W idle, 456W load.
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.66GHz x 4) 213W idle, 263W load.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2879&p=1

edit: still 90nm, 65nm should be better, but they have a long way to go - and by the time they get there Intel 45nm will be on the horizon.

[az]

...and only available through newegg. In Germany not before 2007.

It's a quickshot, let's just hope AMD have something more spectacular in a year and that they don't lose all of their market share until then.

[ZokesPro]

It may not be a top performer but at least it's out there. Hopefully AMD will catch up soon.

[Kooldino]

Intel is really laying the smack down on AMD right now. I haven't seen Intel this far ahead since the P-II era and earlier.

[Wombat]

Looks that way, though I don't trust the power numbers. AMD & Intel don't use the same methodology, and AMD's method results in higher rated power consumption. Also, remember that AMD's numbers include the memory interfaces, and Intel's don't.

[lowlifecat]

plus XP doesn't do multi cores very well. Vista is supposed to handle it better.. i'd like to see some vista benchmarks

[schmosef]

Vista is sweet on my Core2 duo rig. Definitely snappier than XP. Haven't installed the RTM version yet; haven't had time.