Intel Skulltrail platform hits 4GHz air-cooled. Launching very soon

by Tarinder Sandhu on 8 January 2008, 15:30

Tags: Skulltrail, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), PC

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We reported on Intel's Skulltrail platform during last autumn's IDF in San Francisco. Skulltrail, in short, uses server underpinnings to run two quad-core Xeon processors that are optimised for the desktop environment. The supporting chipset, loosely based on the Seaburg SKU, provides potential quad-SLI support via a couple of NVIDIA MCP chips. Further, the board's BIOS has been heavily overhauled to provide a slew of enthusiast-oriented options.



Whilst Skulltrail at IDF was more of a proof of concept - moving on from the ill-fated V8 platform that barely saw the light of day - it's now being primed for launch with select partners.


One such partner is Alienware, and Intel demonstrated a water-cooled system running at 4GHz, as shown by the CPU-Z shot below.



We expect the majority of partners to ship their Skulltrail-based machines at, or very close to, the 4GHz clock-speed. It is the extreme end of the extreme, after all.

Intel's in-house machine, pictured first, was running, stably, at that frequency with air-cooling, lending weight to the fact that the as-yet-unannounced Intel Core 2 Extreme X9775's yields are, well, rather good.

Given that the platform will require FB-DIMMs, two quad-core S771 Xeon processors, and an expensive motherboard, we don't see basic configurations - equipped with SLI-forming high-end NVIDIA cards - providing much change out of £3,000.

We have no doubt that Skulltrail systems will become the fastest desktops around, but that's hardly surprising given the current state of the high-end desktop CPU market, is it?

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HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Very nice.

How well does it Fold though :)
wow how many diff companys in one box lol, coolermaster, thermaltake, corsair, intel, thermalright just wow lol
not bad, imagine what it can do water cooled though?? any ideas on launch price?
Wow a computer that might even be able to run crysis full spec above 60FPS :lol:
Cozwin
wow how many diff companys in one box lol, coolermaster, thermaltake, corsair, intel, thermalright just wow lol

supermicro, tyan or asus for the board