Skulltrail Enthusiast Platforms Arrive
When AMD launched the QuadFX system it got Intel pondering the thought of a high-end desktop PC platform based on workstation-class chips. Intel responded just two months later and showed off the V8 test system with eight cores of processing power! Six months later Intel had two Xeon X5365 processors and the Intel S5000XVN workstation motherboard that made up the V8 system in our hands and the benchmarks showed Intel had nothing to worry about from QuadFX. Sadly, AMD ended the QuadFX program not even a year after it was launched, but that didn't stop Intel from releasing another V8 system with the code name - Skulltrail. Legit Reviews first spotted Skulltrail at the Intel Developer Forum last fall and found out that this board would support both ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI video card technology, which is neat to say the least. It was originally said to support Triple-SLI and maybe even Quad-SLI since the motherboard supports four x16 PCI Express lanes, but that seems to have changed in recent months. In the days leading up to the launch of Skulltrail this statement was sent out by NVIDIA:
There are rumors that 3-way SLI on Skulltrail could be enabled with a driver from NVIDIA. Just wanted to inform you that Skulltrail motherboards use two NVIDIA nForce 100 SLI MCPs. The nForce 100 SLI chip allows a maximum of two GeForce graphics cards to work together, enabling SLI between two GeForce GPUs such as the GeForce 8800 GTX, and enables Quad SLI on dual-GPU graphics boards such as the GeForce 7950 GX2. The nForce 100 SLI MCP will NOT support 3-way SLI. This cannot change even with a driver/bios update.
Seems just two card SLI is available on Skulltrail, but that is great compared to not being able to run SLI at all. Without further ado, lets take a look at Skulltrail and get to it!
When AMD launched the QuadFX system it got Intel pondering the thought of a high-end desktop PC platform based on workstation-class chips. Intel responded just two months later and showed off the V8 test system with eight cores of processing power! Six months later Intel had two Xeon X5365 processors and the Intel S5000XVN workstation motherboard that made up the V8 system in our hands and the benchmarks showed Intel had nothing to worry about from QuadFX. Sadly, AMD ended the QuadFX program not even a year after it was launched, but that didn't stop Intel from releasing another V8 system with the code name - Skulltrail. Legit Reviews first spotted Skulltrail at the Intel Developer Forum last fall and found out that this board would support both ATI Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI video card technology, which is neat to say the least. It was originally said to support Triple-SLI and maybe even Quad-SLI since the motherboard supports four x16 PCI Express lanes, but that seems to have changed in recent months. In the days leading up to the launch of Skulltrail this statement was sent out by NVIDIA:
There are rumors that 3-way SLI on Skulltrail could be enabled with a driver from NVIDIA. Just wanted to inform you that Skulltrail motherboards use two NVIDIA nForce 100 SLI MCPs. The nForce 100 SLI chip allows a maximum of two GeForce graphics cards to work together, enabling SLI between two GeForce GPUs such as the GeForce 8800 GTX, and enables Quad SLI on dual-GPU graphics boards such as the GeForce 7950 GX2. The nForce 100 SLI MCP will NOT support 3-way SLI. This cannot change even with a driver/bios update.
Seems just two card SLI is available on Skulltrail, but that is great compared to not being able to run SLI at all. Without further ado, lets take a look at Skulltrail and get to it!
The Intel Skulltrail platform consists of the Intel D5400XS motherboard that supports two LGA771 based processors at 1066/1333/1600 bus speeds, for up to 8-core processing. The Skulltrail configuration that we are looking at today consists of a pair of Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors. The Intel D5400XS supports both Core 2 and Xeon LGA771 processors, so if you are worried about the budget alternate CPU's are available at various price points. The Intel D5400XS is basically a workstation board and as such uses the EATX format, so a larger chassis will be needed. The D5400XS uses up to four slots of FB-DIMM dual-channel memory at either DDR2 667MHz or 800MHz speeds. This might be the last time we see FB-DIMM's on the high-end enthusiast platforms as rumor has it that Intel might be going to DDR3 memory. Notice that the MCH is passive cooled, but the pair of NVIDIA nForce 100 chipsets and south bridge are actively cooled.
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