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Hardware Intel Details "Skulltrail" Enthusiasts Platform
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - April 17, 2007 12:50 AM

45 comment(s) - last by TheMailMan78.. on Apr 18 at 12:07 PM

Intel prepares to take on AMD's Quad FX

Intel hinted at the possibilities of a high-end gaming system based around its Xeon workstation processors earlier this year at CES 2007. The Intel V8 system featured two Xeon Clovertown processors clocked at 2.4 GHz and a single GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card. Although it was a proof of concept to counter AMD’s Quad FX enthusiast platform at the time, Intel has announced the V8 concept will become a reality at its Spring Intel Developer Forum in Beijing, China.

Intel has named its new enthusiast platform Skulltrail. Intel has remained very tight-lipped about its Skulltrail platform except a few basic features. Skulltrail will arrive later this year and accommodate two Core micro architecture quad-core processors. It is unknown if Intel will develop a new platform to accommodate dual LGA775 socket processors or rework its LGA771 socket Xeon workstation platform to accommodate unbuffered DDR2 memory. Intel’s Xeon workstation platform only accepts FB-DIMM memory.

On the graphics processing side of things, Skulltrail will sport four PCIe slots for graphics expansion. Intel doesn’t divulge details on which multi-GPU graphics technology Skulltrail takes advantage of, however, Intel’s current 975X Express supports AMD’s CrossFire technology.

Intel has not released any details on the chipset powering Skulltrail yet. Nevertheless, Intel expects to unveil its next-generation single processor enthusiast chipset, X38 Express, later this year.

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RE: blar

By subhajit on 4/17/2007 7:39:56 AM , Rating: 3

I think these Systems are overkill (for gaming) because no game developer will ever think of developing their games based on this kind of hardware. So, the only benefit you get is insanely high frame rate, which you really don't need. Another benefit is of course that it is future-proof. But a new generation of product is always able to touch the same performance with lower cost and power-consumption.

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RE: blar

By OrSin on 4/17/2007 10:21:32 AM , Rating: 2

What planet have you been on. I remember when Doom3 and Oblivian came out and they over taxed every system out and every dame website was riding thier jocks.

Look at how great a system you need for these games. They are that good. I thought everyone alive was complete fools for having to spend 600 in upgrades to play 1 game. People bashed me this site for say the saem think.

Now high end sytems are over kill because the new must have game didn't come out yet. People are so flanky.

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RE: blar

By kamel5547 on 4/17/2007 11:29:43 AM , Rating: 2

Yes but.... mostly what people ened is GPU power and not CPU power. Most games would take advantage of more GPU power, but have 2 quad-cores vs one dual core is not going to net you much gain. Even if games go more multi-threaded 1 quad core will be more than enough for the near future, while a new GPU iwll be a must have.

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