KEY POINTS:
If Intel's latest high-end motherboard, (ominously named Skulltrail) was a car, it'd do 0-200km in under a second, feel like a Ferrari to drive and possess more grunt than the annual output of the Kiwi bacon factory. In a nutshell, Intel's Skulltrail possesses computing power to burn.
Intel obviously had an epiphany in their branding department, shifting from the unhip to the full-on with the Skulltrail, whose name is pretty apt given the sheer amount of raw power this beast brings to play.
Depending on which CPU's you choose to fit, The Skulltrail can bring a positively stonking eight CPU cores to the table. Thanks to Intel, who kindly shipped the review motherboard to me with a pair of Intel quad Core Extreme CPUs, I was equipped with power to burn and was itching to plug the Skulltrial in and put it through its paces.
Based on Intel's 5400 chipset, the Skulltrail motherboard has twin CPU sockets, and can accept a raft of CPU's including the Xenon and quad Core Extremes. Packing four PCIe expansion slots, the Skulltrail can theoretically combine the processing power of up to four graphics cards to deliver an unprecedented amount of power for delivery of some severely amazing peeper-pleasing graphics.
Raw grunt aside, The Skulltrail comes fully optioned on both the multimedia and connectivity fronts. Its integrated audio provides 7.1 analogue and optical audio outputs (which can be disabled should you want to add an external audio card) and connectivity-wise there's 6 USB 2.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and 2 eSATA ports. In short, there's not a lot that the Skulltrail won't work with.
As would be expected, an extraordinary motherboard such as the Skulltrail demands extraordinary components. The motherboard itself isn't petite so first up you'll need to factor in an extra big case to maximise expandability and airflow to keep everything cool.
Next on the component shopping list, the Skulltrail demands a minimum of four high-end graphic cards and of course two quad core CPUs. This all adds up to a near bottomless appetite for electricity which means you need at least a 1,200 watt power supply or greater and then there's screens, keyboards, mice and of course speakers.
Last (but by no means least), the Skulltrail motherboard, being based on server technology, requires FBDIMM memory which can cost anything up to five times the cost of normal run-of-the-mill desktop PC memory.
Connecting everything up, the Skulltrail scored blistering results to make a mockery of nearly every benchmark tests I could throw at it. Firing up a borrowed copy of Crysis, the latest and greatest first-person PC shooter which is notorious for bringing even the most powerful PCs to their knees, the Skulltrail barely broke a sweat as I blasted my way through the games first levels.
Doing a little Google research also revealed the Skull to be an overclockers wet dream, with one mad PC geek reporting they'd even managed to take the Skulltrail's 8 processor cores past the 6Ghz mark. This not only makes for some astonishing PC gaming goodness, but will probably see the Skulltrail doing double duty as a house heater in winter and BBQ in summer. Brilliant!
The Verdict
Components and costs are one thing but the sheer raw power of the Skulltrail is truly something to behold. If you've got cash to burn and really want a truly drool-inducing chunk of PC hardware, you could do one hell of a lot worse than the Skulltrail. It's not only crammed with more processing horsepower than a glue factory, but will run nearly any application you'd care to throw at it whilst still demand more. We like the Skulltrial!
Benchmark: Intel Skulltrail
3DMark06 CPU Score 6359
3Dmark06 Overall Score 17006
Cinebench R10 Beta CPU Score 21521
TMPEGEnc 4.0 Express v4.3.3.9999 Beta 53 (sec)
Motherboard RRP: $1149.00
Specifications
CPU: Type Intel Quad Core 2 Duo Extreme or Intel Xeons
RAM: Supports up to 8GB
Slots: PCI-E x16 Four primary PCI Express 1.1 x16 (electrical x16) bus add-in card connector, PCI Slots 2
Storage: PATA 1 x ATA100, SATA 6, 2 x eSATA 3Gb/s
Audio: SigmaTel STAC9274D integrated (8.1 Channels)
LAN: 10/100/1000Mbps
I/O: USB 6 x USB 2.0, IEEE1394 1 x IEEE 1394a, S/PDIF Out 1x Optical
