"Adding two more memory modules would have increased the system's peak bandwidth, but at the cost of additional memory access latency and power consumption."

With more memory I think the latency would be identical or 1/2 depending on the access pattern. With parallel access the bandwidth doubles and the latency per byte is 1/2.

It would be MORE interesting to read the review of the Mac implimentation of this...because, apparently, this must be what the top Mac Pro is using. The specs line up.

OSX, and the apps that run on it, seem to handle SMP much better than Windows ever has. So, therefore, remove the OS as the "limiting" factor and see what this puppy can do on alternate configurations.

I wonder if this will galvanized AMD into doing something more with the FX platform, perhaps with an ATI chipset.

Four VMware installations each running a SMP client.

Clocked at 4ghz...

~2500 PPD * 4...

10k ppd.

Yeah, this belong to TWAIN list....

Technology Without An Imminent Need

And yet very few games really make use of two cores, let alone one. Not even a reason to buy a Q6600 yet let alone one of these. Unless you don't plan on upgrading for the next 4-5 years, which is probably right considering the amount of money you'll have to spend on one. :l

First of all, you don't have to use the QX9775s. In fact, getting one of Intel's extreme processor isn't worth it already, getting two of them is like burning money. I personally think that dual E5410s overclocked to 1600FSB is a nice respectable 8 cores at 2.8Ghz vs the 3.2Ghz of the QX9775s. So about 10% slower. Dual E5410s cost about $550 for both, where as Dual QX9775s cost about $3000.

Second, unless you want to SLI on this platform, any Seaburg chipset motherboard can give you the same performance. Wait for the Asus Z7S to come out to get the same overclocking for about half the price of the Intel board. Asus Z7S doesn't support SLI though.

To overcome the SLI problem, just wait for the Nvidia 9800GX2 to come out. Having one of them will make SLI automatically work for you.

I would recommend the following system for anyone interested in Skulltrail: Prices taken from www.froogle.com

Asus Z7S $400
Dual E5410s if you want to overclock to 1600FSB $550
Dual L5410s not overclocked $700
4x 1.5V Low voltage Supermicro 2gb DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs $410
Nvidia 9800GX2 coming out in two weeks. $450
Samsung F1 750GB hard drive $150
Coolermaster Stacker case with 1000W power supply $200
DVD drive $30

That's a really really nice system for $2300 dollars or so. Hardly the 5000 dollar figure being thrown around by review sites simply because of the ridiculous pricing for the QX9775s.

It's the coolest codename known to geekdom

Just for fun, I found this list.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_technology_code_names

I'm quite surprised in terms of the graphics components. Getting Crossfire to work seems really easy (it could be done on the Southbridge), but to get SLI it seems Intel had to really go out of its way to please Nvidia, in addition to paying them. Wonder why they simply just didn't say "screw you Nvidia" (well, not in that exact phrase) and just go with Crossfire. Seems they'd be leaving a potential 3 people out in the cold.

Crysis ????

Skulltrail was already deep into development by the time AMD peed down its leg.

Good stuff there! lol

while you did give a nod to how the system shipped, it would have been interesting to quantify the impact on memory & power consumption when you had the DIMM slots fully populated.

So umm, this is like the tweaked guts of the Mac Pro ? ;)

Adi

Liquor store in Riyadh...that's great stuff, right there.

As for the platform, aside from e-peen contests, I don't really see the point.

Wow, I would rather spend that kind of money on 4 separate rigs. At least if one went south, I would still have three left.

No, wait, that is like having 4 Chevettes instead of a Corvette. Hmmm. I never knew of a Chevette getting the ladies excited.

Why the hell there are PCI slots on these boards and most of all in between 16xPCIe 1 and 2? To be honest, there should only be one PCI slot for a high-end PCI soundcard and be placed on the leftmost slot.

Anywayn, PCI is officially dead. You finally can get any discrete peripheral in PCIe (yes, there are PCIe audio cards)

no idea what i'd do with this kind of hardware (in other words, there's no way I'd put it to good enough use), but it's fun to look at and daydream.

Every pic of that thing makes me want to climb on and drive around the Everglades.

After reading the review, it seems that Skulltrail is Intel's version of 4x4 expect that it's performance does not suck as much.

Intel tried way too hard to convert their Xeon workstation platform to cater towards hardcore enthusiasts.

WTF does it need FB-DIMMs and more importantly why does it only have four FB-DIMM slots? It effective defeats the raison d'etre of FB-DIMM for multi-chip Xeons.

I have already pointed out the stupidity of having two PCI slots and their placement on reference boards.

It was painfully obvious since the day that Intel announced Skulltrail gaming performance would be inferior to its single-chip counterparts. It is again from FB-DIMMs and underlying platform that was based on is geared for stability not performance.

The only area where Skulltrail deliver its performance is professional level stuff like ray-tracing and scientific computing.

It is too bad that Skulltrail platform is crippled in dumbfounded ways to be a viable mid to low-range alternative to real Xeon workstation platforms. Namely, only having 4 FB-DIMM slots.

I also see that Amdahl's law at work with some of the multi-threaded benchmarks on 8-core systems.

The FB-DIMMs seem to be this platform's curse.. not only are they expensive, the slower memory architecture is presumably what's making it slower than single-chip quad cores, except in the cases where more than four cores can be used.

Conclusion: much ado about nothing!

This platform was conceived as a "me too!" response to 4x4. And it's about as useful, too. For real workstation users max 4 mem dimms is a joke, and for gamers fb-dimms are a joke. Pay 3 times the price, get a 15% performance increase.

"Step right up, there's a sucker born every day!"

I like that Folding plug, but will there be people who have more money than sense buy this and Fold for us?

FIrssT post. Wow, that was disappointing. Its barely faster than its four cored counter part.