If you want a manual on "how to take on AMD for everything they've got" just ask Intel, they've got just the thing for you, seeing as how their determination has led them into a whole bunch of mishaps, including an ongoing trial with AMD, in which Intel "accidentally" erased the employers' e-mails and other data that could have been vital to this trial. A judge ordered them to recover the data and install better back-up solutions so that to avoid this ordeal from happening in the future.

When it comes to recovering data from a deleted hard drive, it's no piece of cake, and if those drives have had information written over it, good luck in finding that proverbial needle in the haystack.(!) But still, there are things Intel could throw against AMD, as they have a bag full of "goodies", one of which is to counterattack AMD's high-end gaming platform, the Quad FX. They intended on doing so with a system based on Xeon processors, does the Intel V8 versus 4x4 ring any bell?

This idea first made itself present at CES 2007, but now Intel is actually putting some thought into the enthusiast platform, codenamed "Skulltrail", and although not very many information became available, we know this much. It will be based on quad-core processors from the Core microarchitecture, as initial pointers lead to the assumption of a dual-socket motherboard, housing two quad-core processors and up to four PCI-Express slots.

The initial project, Intel's V8, was based on Xeon-based processors, but there might be a snag, for that kind of platform uses FB-DIMMs, which cost a lot and are of no particular need for the desktop segment. That leads to one question: will Intel use LGA775 socket processors for this platform or modify a Xeon-based platform to support DDR2, or even DDR3 memory? Either way, a two socket motherboard, with quad-core processors, and four PCI-Express graphics cards, I'm thinking 'what would such a monster eat up in terms of power consumption and even noise level?'. On one hand, Intel is promoting energy efficient solutions and, at the flip of a switch, Mr. Hyde comes out with a current-sucking vampire.