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Intel's upcoming Skulltrail enthusiast motherboard up close and personal

Posted Dec 29, 2007 at 10:47PM by Ceasar S. Listed in: Computing, News Tags: Asus, Intel, nVidia, FireWire, semiconductor

Okay Banzai Runners, listen up: since Intel's demonstration of the Skulltrail during the Intel Developer Forum back in late fall of 2007, there's been much hype proliferating around the new "gaming platform" touted by the California-based semiconductor manufacturer. But now a new and improved prototype model popped up from the weaving nethers of the World Wide Web, and new images of the Skulltrail has got the hardware enthusiast in us all riled up.

But if you're not all too cozy and updated in the techie scene, you would have missed out on the server motherboard turned extreme PC enthusiast gaming platform and its ability to wield a duo of quad-core processors. And if the eight-core CPU setup wasn't enough to intimidate you, the Skulltrail also packs a killer NVIDIA MCP chipset (nForce 100) tag-team for dual CPU support and optimum NVIDIA SLI setups. Plus, they come actively cooled.

The images shown below now reveal that the Skulltrail might just be the uber dream platform to beat, since ASUS' Striker II Formula (based on NVIDIA's nForce 780i chipset) touts but a single CPU socket for the Intel's newest 45-nm Quad-core Extreme QX9650 or the next slew of Penryns to bust out of the woodwork by early 2008.

The standard fare of eSATA, USB, GigaLAN, and Firewire will join the board's connectivity features. HD audio seems to be planned for the Skulltrail, though which audio chip or makeup to latch onto the board is as yet unclear. More on that and the rest of the Skulltrail's specifications as we come across them.

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by xche78x - 2007-12-30

» hush

please correct the QX6950 to QX9650

oh thats uber great motherboard that will wow any hardcore pc builder.

and finally intel is adopting nvidia sli as its main gpu solution.
using crossfire is somewhat odd because competitor AMD owns it.

ASUS will be the leader again incorporating everything a gamer wants. the reference board above is missing extra lan port and wifi. and the board should be longer to accommodate 4 double slot gpu. single slot gpu board are not supported in tri or quad sli. unless they make new nvidia gpu's that only uses single slot and runs in tri or quad sli? hmmn geforce 9xxx?

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