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Reviews Around The Web
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Choose Web Reviews from this Maker:
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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How do you define the ultimate gaming system? Is it the best price/performance system or just the system with the most power, regardless of the cost? Intel's answer goes by the name of SkullTrail, which gives you the opportunity of using two high-end processors and two high-end video cards in one system. Today we'll take a look at what Intel is offering in terms of performance compared to a regular high-end system.
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Monday, February 11, 2008
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Skulltrail. Even the name sounds mean. If you haven't heard the codename before now then we have a treat in store for you today. Skulltrail is a high end desktop PC platform based on Xeon class workstation processors. How does Dual Cpu, 8 Cores, four graphics card slots, dual 1600mhz front side buses with a total of 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth grab you?
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Overall the Skulltrail as a platform is one that is on a road all its own as no one at this timeframe has a platform that crosses so many different barriers in one system package. Price may be a daunting factor to some, but you have to figure into the equation how many systems you are not buying when you get a Skulltrail. This entire platform will only appeal to those who really work from home and want an all in one solution to both their business and personal computing needs. Personally I can't wait to see what happens as the drivers and BIOS mature as then I am sure we will see some even better results performance wise from the Skulltrail.
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Wednesday, February 6, 2008
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Intel really has been firing up their engines at full speed and the new SkullTrail takes the multiplatform system to new levels. This is the first anything and everthing platform as it has all the power that worstation class users need, and all the thrills and features that gamers and enthsiasts covet for their personal PC. This is the only Intel platform that integrates NVIDIA's SLI technology and on a board that supports CrossFire as well. There is more to this system than we even got to in this review, but so far this system has been the fastest and most feature oriented one we have seen yet. Truly Intel has been doing their homework and the overclocker audience once shunned and ignored is now embraced in the boldest move by the boys in blue yet. Check out the cool SkullTrail case we modded from a CoolerMaster Stacker 830, its sweet!
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When it comes to performance the Intel Skulltrail platform is hands down the fastest platform that we have ever looked at. With the dual 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9775 quad-core processors in the system it consistently outperformed the other test systems in multi-threaded tests that could take advantage of the eight cores. The only two areas that the Skulltrail platform didn't shine was in memory bandwidth and gaming. The DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs just don't provide the memory bandwidth needed to compete with DDR3 memory kits and it shows where memory bandwidth does come into play. When it comes to gaming it's not the fact the board is only PCI Express 1.0, it is because the games are not optimized to run on eight cores. In reality many games are designed to run on just three cores as many games are now written with consoles in mind...
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Monday, February 4, 2008
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During a meeting with Intel representatives at CES, we were informed that Intel's ultra high-end Skulltrail enthusiast platform would finally be available for testing and evaluation in just a few weeks. And it turned out they were true to their word. We've been banging on a Skulltrail setup complete with a matched pair of 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors and DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs for a couple of weeks and have the result available on-line right now for all to see. Head on over to the site and take a look...
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