Skulltrail wíll use Core 2 Extreme QX9775 and has Quad SLI s

[Andreas G]

At IDF Taiwan Intel decided to trump its own overclocking display by bringing an even bigger chip to the show; an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770. This beast has a 3.2 Ghz clock frequency and a 1600 MHz FSB, and will become the new flagship next year. This processor uses the regular desktop socket 775, but since the coming enthusiast platform "Skulltrail" is built upon the D5400XS chipset, also known as Seaburg, the QX9770 won't work. Intel D5400XS is namely for socket 771, and will therefore use a different Core 2 Extreme processor than the desktop boards. It will still be called Core 2 Extreme, but be named QX9775 and cost $1,499 apiece (1Ku).

Over at HKEPC they've published a slide from an Intel presentation that reveals quite a lot about the upcoming Skulltrail platform (translated via Google). Amongst others we get it in writing from Intel self that there is not only SLI support, but actually Quad SLI support. This is due to the use of two extra NVIDIA MCPs located near the PCIe slots. There's no mention of CrossFire, but we can't imagine that Intel would cut out CrossFire in favor of SLI.

Alas, Skulltrail requires FB-DIMM modules, which are very expensive and runs at only 800 MHz, but on the other hand you can have as much as 8 GB of it.

Skulltrail is expected to arrive sometime Q1 2008.

[KTE]

Disappointing.

Price is more than just ridiculous. I bet the board costs $500 too!

Intel always maximizes the frequencies before launch, so this shows there's not much room left for any more SKUs but one or two. I remember in January 2006 all saying quoting Intel that it would release a 1333FB 3.33GHz Conroe at release, and it never came for the next 18months, and still hasn't, even with this years upcoming Penryn 45nm chips.

[Delph1]

I kind of agree. I was hoping Skulltrail to become more of a commodity, but as more and more info surfaced I realized that the only difference between Skulltrail and V8 would be that the former would be even more expensive and have proper support for graphics.

I'm not surprised that it looks like this today, but I'm disappointed at the same time. OK, so Intel has managed to beat AMD here too, but 4x4/QuadFather/whatever was a horrible idea to begin with! ... *sigh*

//Andreas
_________________
"I'm sort of a postmodern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically"
"You are our Swedish superhero "

Forget everything, knowledge is your enemy, it's only going to make you second-guess yourself."

[KTE]

The worst thing for me is FB-DIMMS. They're limited in every direction. This has gotta be a massive power hog system which'll needs the 1kW and above PSUs with two GPUs. Around $4-5k for this build not including cooling is worse than P4 EE days.

So, will the server Xeons work in this board that you know?

[Delph1]

They will, so you can get cheaper processors.

//Andreas
_________________
"I'm sort of a postmodern vegetarian, I eat meat ironically"
"You are our Swedish superhero "

Forget everything, knowledge is your enemy, it's only going to make you second-guess yourself."