14 DAY TRIAL // The latest reports on Intel indicate that the company is seriously thinking of delivering a new Skulltrail extreme gaming platform. The Nehalem version of the platform is expected to arrive in early 2009, with new features and enhancements over the previous version. The first thing that should be noticed is that the new Skulltrail will come with the X58 chipset, marking a switch from the repurposed server board with a server chipset that the first model was.
The same as the current Skulltrail, the new version will come with two sockets for quad-core processors, and will also feature support for both NVIDIA and AMD’s multi-GPU systems. The new X58 will receive SLI from NVIDIA, as the graphics chips manufacturer has already announced, and that will be possible both with and without the nForce 200 SLI bridge chip. The current version of the board uses NVIDIA's chip, yet Intel is expected to ditch it and go for the software control instead.
The giant chip manufacturer hasn't unveiled yet any specific information regarding the number of PCIe slots, how many cards will be supported in SLI and Crossfire, memory amount or hard drive count. Even so, it will be quite interesting to see how Intel would distinguish Skulltrail from other X58 boards that can do 24GB of RAM on three channels of DDR3, while also featuring SLI support. One thing could be counted on here – it will be the first such board to support dual sockets.
There are voices saying that the board will not make too much of a difference when it comes to gaming, as the performance will not increase that much, if at all, from four to eight cores. Skulltrail will most likely come with quad-SLI or -CrossFire, while also featuring superior I/O options on additional circuitry like USB3, SATA600, or FireWire S3200. Even so, given the small difference in performance between this board and other X58s, the price is expected to be considerably lowered.
The current Skulltrail costs around $600, and features support for the highest-end LGA771 CPUs only. If the new Skulltrail system features the same graphics and RAM as a single socket X58 system, the difference between them should not take its pricing above the $600 mark. On the other hand, it may support quad-GPU setup, or the chip maker may allow compatibility with midrange Core i7 variants as well. Intel is expected to shed some light on this matter at IDF in Taipei, two weeks from now.