Intel seems like it's going to be making a bigger push at gamers with the launch of
Penryn, and HotHardware managed to score some deets on the company's upcoming "Skulltrail" platform, which is built-around server-class hardware reconfigured for gaming. The new mobo pictured here supports dual quad-core Penryn Xeon processors, SLI graphics, and four PCI Express x16 slots, as well as two standard PCI slots. You're also looking at a whopping six internal SATA ports, dual eSATA ports, six USB ports, a lone FireWire port, and Gigabit Ethernet. That's quite a foundation for a gaming rig -- let's just hope pricing is at least pretend reasonable, eh?
posted Dec 28th 2007 1:39PM
Crysis, is a very bad example of benchmarking hardware. Its poorly coded and was rushed. companies with technical prowess such as ID software, always have the best detail/system requirement ratios. Where they are fully optimised, and run smoothly while looking good. Too bad the gaming industry relies heavily on easy solution and sdk made for nub developers (aka dx 10) while opengl matches the visuals while superseding in performance.
I'm looking at making a new gaming rig... Hopefully Intel doesn't disappoint with the pricing?
I can't imagine this thing costing less than $400.
The CPUs alone have been rumored to each have a $1,000 MSRP.
One of the first (I think) server motherboads to support 45nm Xeons costs over £320 and has everything (inc 2 16x PCI-E2 Slots)but overclocking abilities. On this basis, I can't see this mobo costing less than £300 myself. I won't be at all surprised if it retails for £340+ given the complexities of its overclocking features. Thinks like this will ALWAYS come at a VERY HIGH premium for people mad enough to invest in it. I don't see the point my self because whats 100fps when your getting 70? Your not going to notice the difference, and how many games make use of 4 cores yet alone a possible 8 right now? Other than using it for Video, CAD or CG work its a complete waste of money as far as I'm concerned.
It does look the business though, I'll give it that...cracking looking motherboard.
Looks like a sweet motherboard. I guess I know where the tax refund is going - lol
Totally overkill.
Totally want it.
Not really, as far as gaming, graphics, and realism are concerned, future games are being limited by hardware, not the lack of appropriate algorithms or textures. The faster we push these technologies forward, the better.
@Greg since 3d gaming became popular it has been limited by the hardware.
The developers write their games for the latest hardware with the ability to degrade gracefully on older hardware. Crysis is the best example of this at the moment. If you want to run (at a playable framerate) on the highest settings you need a bleeding edge computer, however you can turn down the graphics to the point where the majority of computers can play it in some form
You make a good point (definately agree hardware need to advance to push games forward), but I still stand by my overkill judgement on two reasons:
1) Most games are GPU-bound. Even a SLI system chugs through much of Crysis on max settings, and while a good CPU is important because of physics calculations, there is a point where more powerful CPUs make virtually no difference.
2) Only a few games take advantage of Quad core processors, much less 8 cores. This will start to change, but it will take a while.
So it's overkill right now, and in the near future. In 2-3 years this may be semi-standard for gamers...who knows.
Hopefully this doesnt cost a lot, seeing as you also have to buy two cpu's. At least it will run crysis-throw 3 9800GTX cards in there
I bet that MoBo costs more than the whole computer I built a few months ago, and I didn't build a cheap rig.
I don't game, but I know a few people that do and they all use AMD and don't like Intel. I don't know if the new chips are better for gaming, but if most gamers are like those I know they would never build an Intel rig, and the core demographic for this board are gone.
Prove me wrong!
@mattclarkie
Your friends are either trying to save a buck or living a few years in the past. AMD chips are cheaper, but for gaming they still fall behind the latest Intel chips and aren't as overclockable.
You're wrong. :) Basically since the Core 2 line came out, Intel's been stronger for gamers than AMD.
I have always been told Intels were better for gaming/rendering, where AMDs are better for multitasking. AMDs are a lot cheaper though.
When I bought my AMD things were pretty similar - it was a choice between an early Core Duo or an Opteron, and I chose the Opty 170 because it was slightly cheaper, I already had a mobo for it, and it overclocked like crazy (the Intels didn't overclock as much back then as they do now).
But right now, Intel is the way to go. You can get a quad core processor for $250 nowadays, it's crazy. AMD has been playing catchup for the last two years and it doesn't look like they'll be catching up this round with Phenom.
They are supposedly working on a second line of cheaper better quad cores, along with octo-cores. If they can get those octos out before intel, that would probably get them standing back up pretty well.
Whatever happened to names like "Archie" and "Veronica"? Now we have "SKULLTRAIL". It sounds like one of those Lou Diamond Phillips revenge films on an Sioux indian reservation.
"WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME...SKULLTRAIL?!"
Funny enough, that very phrase could be heard now at the AMD offices.
Hopefully 2008 will finally bring an end to people saying 'deets'
Agreed, but I'm not about to start holding my breath.
'American English' has always been about bastardising a perfectly adequate and usable language I'm afraid.
@L.Rawlins
What does the "word" "deets" have to do with American English specifically?
This looks plain awesome, will pick one up if price is good!
With its requirement for special, board-specific processors and FB-DIMM memory, this is probably going to fail even harder than 4x4 did.
Quad-core Xeons are reasonably cheap, funny enough. The requirement for FB-DIMMs, though, is what's going to really catapult the cost out of reach of most people.
very much overkill, i thought programs arent using a quad core processor to its maximum let alone two of them
most programs are ready for 64bit yet either :P
anyway still would want one just to say i have one :D
Wait, is this pci express 2.0?
Damn, amd is gonna have to get those octo-cores that they are supposedly working on out fast to compete.
6 SATA ports isn't really all that impressive, most mid to high end boards these days have that many and the Asus board built for AMD's 4x4 platform had 12!
Especially with optical drives shifting to SATA too. Back in the day you could live with only a pair of SATA ports on your motherboard because you had a legacy PATA DVD (or CD) drive.
With 4 PCI X16 slots you could load up 10GBit network cards and actually get the throughput! I don't know why you would need to do it, or want to considering the price of the cards, switch, and fiber, but atleast it would work! (if my math is right... IIRC you need PCI X4 or higher for real gigabit throughput)
"Skulltrail" makes me think of the opening of a Terminator movie, which strangely can also be said of AMD's current state...
Whatever, I love the name, and once nVidia's new "PW3ND!!11!" architecture comes out it will be a match made in Hell. Not to mention one can simply exchange the "!" for "0" and have binary indication of what version of "PWN3D!!11!" you, well, own.
I for one welcome this new naming convention from our gadget overlords...
sweet baby jesus' tears.. this is the one..
this looks absolutely brilliant..
Once upon a time I had a fan like that on my Radeon 9800. And now its on a southbridge to a motherboard. How times change.
you old fogie! stop living in the past!!@#!@
That board doesn't have much room left on it lol
This board will play the heck out of Doom.
and maybe even *gasp* Quake!
Skulltrail... I'll take the IWHBYD version.
Halo fanboy.
Yes, but can it make coffee?
So would any Mac compare to this?... I don't know shite about Macs cept I want Steve Jobs to lose. :D
Check that. You can probably run Mac on it... No?
With OSX86, yeah, you could. Driver support will probably be non-existent.
Anyone else considered the volume of this thing?
Imagine loading everything you can into it, 2 CPUs, 3 GPUs, a rather large system fan, the size of the PSU needed to run all these things is also going to have a pretty big fan, and finally a well cooled case with countless (no doubt LED fans - if you're sad enough to spend this much money) case fans. Not that I'd refuse it as a present.
will all those fans, itll sound like a lawnmower.
If you're building a computer out of this mobo, two quad cores, and four video cards you're already spending a fortune anyway. Might as well add some form of badass liquid cooling.
Apple's wishlist of things to do
PUT THIS MOTHERBOARD IN THE NEW MAC PROS!
Cheaper graphics cards
Compatability with all Nvidia PC cards. (just get the drivers)
"So would any Mac compare to this?"
Well let's look at what's on board with a current (aging?) Mac Pro...
Support for Dual Quad-Core Xeons..
4 PCI Express 16x Slots
8 SATA Ports (yes I did count them, 4 slide in racks, 2 spare (for eSATA maybe?) and another 2 in the optical bay)
2 PATA Ports for older optical drives
5 USB Ports (Close Enough!)
2x Firewire 800, 2x Firewire 400... Makes up for the one less USB I'd say :P
FB-DIMMs - 8 slots supporting up to 32GB
And all the usuals like onboard sound, slots for WiFi/Bluetooth radio's, etc
Bear in mind this is from a Mac Pro that is over a year old... they are well overdue a refresh and so expect something a little more cutting edge after Januarys MacWorld :)
Still... This Skulltrail thing is quite interesting, I might consider one if the price is right and I'm after a gaming box :)
It only has 1 (one) 16x slot. Adding insult to injury there are only 3 cards that Apple allows you to use, all of which are almost a year and a half out of date.
Oh, I stand corrected.... I thought it was some sort of dynamically assigned thing (Anyone else?)
The 3 card limit has nothing to do with the Mac Pro. You can put whatever you want in there for gaming and just boot to Windows. :)
You guys do know that this hardware won't make any of you suck less at video games right?
So here's my guess: $335.-
Dream on.
Can you fit 4 GPU's on there? I'm assuming you can't because the last two are too close together, but I was just wondering.
Too bad, they are using the stupid 771 chipset. I'm still wondering why they aren't building a dual socket for the 775 chipset. Greed?
Wow, it takes serious balls to name your product SKULLTRAIN and expect to be taken seriously. You've got to respect them for that.
good thing the name is skulltrail, right?
One things for sure, AMD may be skullfracked unless they get their act together.
Good move from Intel. Renaming a server motherboard and call it a gaming platform. The important hardware is even still server hardware (which is more expensive)! I guess Intel is well known for this name changing and selling it as a different product policy, look at the whole cpu range which differ mostly on clockspeed and a huge price gap.
ULTRA COOOMBOOOOOOO!!!
ummmm..... since when has:
1) there been proper dual-processor support in games, i.e. when are we going to see games that use all 8 cores?
2) there been SLI on an Intel mobo (SLI has always only been on nVidia chipset mobos, Intel mobos have always used Crossfire)
and 3) how the f*ck are you going to fit 2 air coolers for the processors in there?! Looks like you're going to have to use water with this monster if you want to do anything other than stock.
Other than that, that looks like a seriously awesome mobo. Intel build quality + SLI = pure pwnage, plus it has a ton of all the other little stuff to make it even better. +1 if the price is right (meaning, there hasn't been a mobo priced up to $300 and worth it in quite a while if ever for the gaming market, now is not a time to start but up to $400 is OK but pushing it).
No one has posted that Intel doesn't have "real" multi-core chips like AMD! I'm shocked!
I guess my rebuttal about how AMD doesn't have "real" 64-bit processors is kind of moot then. (They slightly extended the x86 commandset for 64 bits, instead of moving to Intel's much more agile Itanium 64 architecture. Unfortunately the industry has followed suit)
Maybe it was because Itanium was a full-blown failure supported by no one but HP. AMD64 was the next logical step on the evolution of x86 processors. If I was going to get something incompatible with x86, why would I bother with Itaniums when I could get much better PPC processors with actually better support?
All real gamers play hopscotch.
Seems silly to "make a bigger push at gamers" and then create a product that less than 1% of the PC gaming market will be willing to spend cash on. 2 quad core Xeons and 4 GPUs in SLI costs about 4-8x what the average gamer is willing to spend on a gaming rig. The power supply to run that beast probably costs more than an Xbox360 Arcade.
I'm getting bored of these new gaming technologies that will be obsolete by the time anyone can afford them.
An Intel bord supporting SLI, am I reading that right?
Is there a MB with built in SSD yet?
Wuaw, that MOBO is a real powerhorse.
http://antti666.googlepages.com/rolexreplica