Among computer enthusiasts, there is no such thing as too much performance. With regard to the review sample we received from Intel, we can honestly say that no other system that has passed through our lab has ever provided this much performance. In other words, or rather in numbers, here’s what we got. The Skulltrail system consists of eight physical processor cores that can be (over)clocked at speeds up to 4 GHz. We’re sure marketing-minded people would love to advertise this as a 32 GHz system, but that would obviously be inaccurate. The motherboard sports two socket 771 processor sockets, each equipped with a quad-core CPU. Intel already demonstrated this platform at its last Intel Developer forum in San Francisco, as you can read here.

Upon closer inspection it turns out that Intel must have been under immense pressure when developing this new platform, though. Apparently Intel feared that AMD’s quad-core Phenom CPUs, which had at the time not yet been released, would catch up to or even outpace the Penryn line. Of course, ever since our Article AMD Phenom – The Spider Weaves its Web, the world knows that AMD is still trying to iron out some kinks in its newest CPU.

Trail of Skulls

Thus, the situation was suddenly much less threatening for Intel than anticipated. Nonetheless, the company went through its product list and placed server components on a desktop board. The result is the Skulltrail platform that should currently be able to dwarf anything else available for the desktop space as far as performance is concerned. Due to the multitude of information, benchmarks and test results, we have split our findings into three articles covering different aspects.

Combining these two processors yields a desktop performance monster. If we simply added up the numbers, we’d get “25.6 GHz of Core 2 performance” with a total L2 Cache of 24 MB. Overclocking the system results in a full “32 GHz”.

With today’s launch of the Skulltrail system, Intel is (ironically) following in AMD’s footsteps. The Intel D5400XS motherboard and the new Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processor both hail from the workstation line of products and use socket 771. The motherboard is compatible with all current Xeon processors. As a result, it is possible to equip the system with smaller quad-core processors which cost up to 75 % less.

Intel’s 8-core desktop technology really needn’t fear any opposition – with one exception. The software companies. Since there is very little software available that offers support for up to eight threads, the price-to-performance ratio of the Skulltrail system stands on a very shaky foundation.

Another drawback of the new platform is its immense appetite for power, setting a new (if questionable) record for highest power consumption of a single desktop system. Thus, buyers will be investing not only in the system itself, but also in their energy bill.

The platform is still plagued by a number of problems as well. In the end, we can’t help but feel that the people in marketing got more than a little carried away and lost their grasp on reality.

For some of the editors, this launch feels like a déjà vu. We saw AMD’s 4x4 platform come and go – will Intel’s Skulltrail suffer the same fate?