Don't let get me started on the P190. Let me put it this way, none of the power supplies Intel recommends will fit the P190. The two PSUs it comes with are horribly balanced and wouldn't be a good fit to run Skulltrail. That's just my opinion though.
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Intel Skulltrail Preview @ [H]
- Thread starter FrgMstr
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Don't let get me started on the P190. Let me put it this way, none of the power supplies Intel recommends will fit the P190. The two PSUs it comes with are horribly balanced and wouldn't be a good fit to run Skulltrail. That's just my opinion though.
I have at least 6 FB-DIMMs and two E5340 ES quads not installed that I could run on this board. OC'd, I could probably hit 3GHz easily with decent cooling. I have all the necessary components, all I need is the board. This board or something similar is exactly what I would be looking for my next primary system build, but that would largely be dependent on the final price Intel sets. Alternatively, this one below might be better for my needs:
I'm a Supermicro guy myself, but that Asus really looks fine and I like the layout. The feature set is also quite impressive. The only problem is that Asus has been getting a bad rep with its server offerings recently. I'm a bit wary of that after being burned a few times with other brands.
besides having 4 PCIE16 slots and supporting newer 45nm CPUs
what is the difference between this, and a *cough* dell precision 690 bought last year with dual xeon quads and SLI?
it does not really seem like anything new.
im not a big dell fan but we have them at work with dual quad xeon5355 + 8gb +SLI quadro 4600's (XP64) they are very fast and seem to be quite reliable. but we have to run AC in the winter
what is the difference between this, and a *cough* dell precision 690 bought last year with dual xeon quads and SLI?
it does not really seem like anything new.
im not a big dell fan but we have them at work with dual quad xeon5355 + 8gb +SLI quadro 4600's (XP64) they are very fast and seem to be quite reliable. but we have to run AC in the winter
It setup like any of the other workstation/server boards. You pull in air through the front of the case, through the CPUs, over the FB-Dimms and out the back, they're just following intel cooling specs.
besides having 4 PCIE16 slots and supporting newer 45nm CPUs
what is the difference between this, and a *cough* dell precision 690 bought last year with dual xeon quads and SLI?
it does not really seem like anything new.
im not a big dell fan but we have them at work with dual quad 3.0ghz xeons + 8gb +SLI quadro 4600's (XP64) they are very fast and seem to be quite reliable. but we have to run AC in the winter
Never had to run AC in the winter with mine, but I only have 5160s and SLI'd 4500s, still runs fairly cool at 100 percent CPU usage thanks to the SMP client.
You will require at least 2 SMP clients for all 8 cores to be utilized. Each SMP client uses 4 cores.
Expect at least 5000PPD for a dual Xeon @2.5GHz using two Wondows SMP clients, more for Linux. It's around 6000PPD @~3GHz with Windows.
"Wondows". Is that a new Linux distro?
sorry I had to....So it does scale pretty well from 4 to 8. I think my quad gets about 3k ppd at 3ghz
besides having 4 PCIE16 slots and supporting newer 45nm CPUs
what is the difference between this, and a *cough* dell precision 690 bought last year with dual xeon quads and SLI?
it does not really seem like anything new.
im not a big dell fan but we have them at work with dual quad xeon5355 + 8gb +SLI quadro 4600's (XP64) they are very fast and seem to be quite reliable. but we have to run AC in the winter
Overclocking.
And no, it's really not anything new. It's a server/workstation board with overclocking options and consumer level SLI support.
The main sell for this is SLI over intel chipsets.
well...that....and the whole 8-core thing
Dual socket xeon boards are nothing new. Ones that support SLI are.
McCartney
Gawd
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How long Dan?
I need to beat everyone that says they're gonna get one. I hope my friend can score me some 9775 eses. I dont think he can score me this though because it was from france. I want this soooooo bad.
Screw Nehalem.
Yeah I laughed at that considering my 2.4ghz hit 3.535ghz stable 24/7 on air...
Now 3.2ghz breaking 4ghz is good no doubt since essentially they are the same quad cores just higher bin #'s plus more L2/FSB
still pretty impressive for quad cores... I can't wait to get my next comp which will have a nice quadcore under water!
Manny Calavera
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The oc's it attained were kinda low all things considered.Damn pricy just to get SLI on an 'Intel mobo' Still if I was about to spend really large on a new system this would be it.Or at
least make the short list.Then again,maybe not....
Still it was a great review,and quite the eye opener !
least make the short list.Then again,maybe not....
Still it was a great review,and quite the eye opener !
Intel only told us that it would be available in Q1 of this year. So March 31st is still technically Q1, so sometime in between now and then. They also didn't disclose exact pricing, so aside from the general idea they gave us on pricing, (all they said was that the QX9775 processor would cost more than the QX9650 does) I can't say for sure how much they'll cost or when they'll be available.
McCartney
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that is so dumb.
honestly.
I'm not waiting 1 more month for this, i can't.
honestly.
I'm not waiting 1 more month for this, i can't.
Then look for other Xeon motherboards like the ones suggested in this thread. The performance shouldn't be that far off and it will most likely cost you less.
It could show up in a week or two in retail channels. I've got no idea on that. I thought it was really vague of them to say Q1 this long after they announced the product, but that's all they wanted to tell us.
McCartney
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sigh what bothers me about this dan is i want to buy it but your review just kills all inspiration with the fb-dimm logicality. I mean the fb-dimm 4gb kit is kinda cheap (800mhz 5cas for 230)
sigh what bothers me about this dan is i want to buy it but your review just kills all inspiration with the fb-dimm logicality. I mean the fb-dimm 4gb kit is kinda cheap (800mhz 5cas for 230)
Again, we just used what Intel sent us.
What is it about the review that has you concerned? I have a couple of dual Xeons here, what is it you want to know?sigh what bothers me about this dan is i want to buy it but your review just kills all inspiration with the fb-dimm logicality. I mean the fb-dimm 4gb kit is kinda cheap (800mhz 5cas for 230)
Will what work with any LGA771 compatible Intel chipset?
McCartney
Gawd
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dude apollo I don't want this to be a server bro, I want to game and use it for stupid things.. Which is why I want it.
LOL, I'm going to assume he means any LGA771 chip....
they have quite a few of them and some older models
The Skulltrail motherboard supports only 5400 series Xeons, 5200 series and I think 5300 series processors and of course the Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processor.
LstBrunnenG
Supreme [H]ardness
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How I read the review:
YAY SKULLTRAIL FINALLY
Aww, only four DIMM slots
Aww, LGA771
Aww, FB-DI-- wait, this is a fraking server motherboard!
And then I stopped reading what I'm sure was another wonderfully crafted [H] review/preview. Nothing against the [H], the product simply stopped interesting me at that point.
If I were building a new PC, Skulltrail would certainly be attractive however, I'd have to pay more for processors - and I mean individually, not just because I'm buying two. Then I'd have to pay more for the motherboard - I'm not saying Intel will gouge us, but I doubt they're shooting for the DS3 price point. Then I'd have to pay more for slower memory.
By this point, the only thing I'd gain by not biting the bullet and getting an E-ATX server motherboard is SLi/CF, but those are features that do not appeal to me whatsoever. Plus a good server motherboard would probably give me more DIMM slots, so as my setup aged (notice my current setup is three-year-old technology) I could compensate somewhat by throwing physical memory at it.
A platform like this will have me jumping up and down in excitement when I can use it with desktop CPUs and desktop memory. until then it goes on my "If I win the lottery" list.
YAY SKULLTRAIL FINALLY
Aww, only four DIMM slots
Aww, LGA771
Aww, FB-DI-- wait, this is a fraking server motherboard!
And then I stopped reading what I'm sure was another wonderfully crafted [H] review/preview. Nothing against the [H], the product simply stopped interesting me at that point.
If I were building a new PC, Skulltrail would certainly be attractive however, I'd have to pay more for processors - and I mean individually, not just because I'm buying two. Then I'd have to pay more for the motherboard - I'm not saying Intel will gouge us, but I doubt they're shooting for the DS3 price point. Then I'd have to pay more for slower memory.
By this point, the only thing I'd gain by not biting the bullet and getting an E-ATX server motherboard is SLi/CF, but those are features that do not appeal to me whatsoever. Plus a good server motherboard would probably give me more DIMM slots, so as my setup aged (notice my current setup is three-year-old technology) I could compensate somewhat by throwing physical memory at it.
A platform like this will have me jumping up and down in excitement when I can use it with desktop CPUs and desktop memory. until then it goes on my "If I win the lottery" list.
sorry if this has been covered (didn't feel like reading 6 pages to check) but why doesn't your standard test configuration include 4gb of ram yet? given that you're using vista 64 and also that games are starting to surpass the "2gig barrier", why are you still testing with only 2gb? not to mention how dirt cheap ram is these days and the fact in this article you are DIRECTLY comparing a system with 2gb to a system with 4gb... i'm sure you would find that adding an additional 2gb of ram to the test system would change some of your "real world" gaming benchmarks not just in this review but in many other recent reviews. given that most of us reading your site on windows vista probably have 4gb of ram currently in our systems it would make sense to give us benchmark numbers that we can directly compare to our own systems. at least i thought that was the point to ditching the "canned" benchmarks.
for reference i have a relatively optimized (wlm, sidebar, nod32, g5/15/25 software and dt are my usual background tasks) vista business system and i frequently pass 2gb of total ram usage just playing cs source (1920x1200 max in game settings with 4x aa and 16x af).
for reference i have a relatively optimized (wlm, sidebar, nod32, g5/15/25 software and dt are my usual background tasks) vista business system and i frequently pass 2gb of total ram usage just playing cs source (1920x1200 max in game settings with 4x aa and 16x af).
Well I'll leave that to Kyle to answer but part of the reason stems from the fact that 4 module configurations do not work well on most modern boards. It takes a ton of work to make 4GB of RAM work on some boards if it will work at all. Also 2GB modules still haven't caught up to 1GB modules for speed or latencies.
First off, the NVIDIA 780i SLI system BEAT the Skulltrail that had more RAM in it. Why? Because the games tested do not use more than 2GB of RAM and the higher speed lower latency memory in the comparison system provided the advantage the 780i SLI system needed to beat the Skulltrail board which uses a faster chipset, and slower RAM. I've run 2GB and 4GB of RAM and gone back down to 2GB of RAM even in Vista. Aside from Photoshop performance sucking very little I've run makes any difference in performance. Hell RAM doesn't even improve frame rates in games so I don't see how 4GB of RAM would skew the benchmarks.
Again the games don't use more than 2GB of RAM. Vista doesn't change that. The only time you need 4GB of RAM for Vista and gaming is if you have a bunch of shit running in the background. Granted you might have a bunch of things in the background and so do I. However our test systems don't.
Again, our test systems aren't running a bunch of programs in the back ground.
I wouldn't be surprised if Newegg had them. I'm sure other sites will but I doubt you'll find many of these combinations in stock due to the price. Even the larger companies won't likely stock too many of them at first. They may even end up being special order items for most sites.
How I read the review:
YAY SKULLTRAIL FINALLY
Aww, only four DIMM slots
Aww, LGA771
Aww, FB-DI-- wait, this is a fraking server motherboard!
And then I stopped reading what I'm sure was another wonderfully crafted [H] review/preview. Nothing against the [H], the product simply stopped interesting me at that point.
If I were building a new PC, Skulltrail would certainly be attractive however, I'd have to pay more for processors - and I mean individually, not just because I'm buying two. Then I'd have to pay more for the motherboard - I'm not saying Intel will gouge us, but I doubt they're shooting for the DS3 price point. Then I'd have to pay more for slower memory.
By this point, the only thing I'd gain by not biting the bullet and getting an E-ATX server motherboard is SLi/CF, but those are features that do not appeal to me whatsoever. Plus a good server motherboard would probably give me more DIMM slots, so as my setup aged (notice my current setup is three-year-old technology) I could compensate somewhat by throwing physical memory at it.
A platform like this will have me jumping up and down in excitement when I can use it with desktop CPUs and desktop memory. until then it goes on my "If I win the lottery" list.
I don't know about you but all the information that I've read since the Skulltrail was announced all stated that it would use FB-DIMMs and be an LGA771 setup. I don't know why anyone would expect different. Intel doesn't want their LGA775 desktop chips to support SMP. That would hurt Xeon sales.
Also your comment about the processors doesn't make sense. The Xeon chips are about the same price as their LGA771 counterparts and they are just as fast and have all the same features. They are also available at almost any reputable E-Tailer so again, not using desktop LGA775 chips isn't a problem at all. The comment concerning FB-DIMMs is something I can agree with though. For a gaming platform FB-DIMMs aren't an attractive feature. You don't have to use Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors with the D5400XS motherboard and its' feature set is in line with all the other high dollar enthusiast boards out there.
Throwing physical memory on the system won't help in games. Games barely use 2GB as it is. BTW the Skulltrail motherboard supports 16GB of RAM so for desktop applications and even 3D applications like Maya and 3D Studio Max will be fine. You don't need 8 DIMM slots on these types of things. The only reason I can see for having that amount of memory and memory slots is for database servers or machines running an insane amount of VMs. Such machines should probably be quad processor setups and not dual if it is running enough VMs to necessitate more than 16GB of RAM.
new mobo. Ok so Im a little lost here. I know what a 771 socket is but what is an LGA 771 socket they are different since I see that there 2 different series of cpu's also.
FB-DIMMS what a bad choice for a new motherboard.
I have been using them for a year now and do they run hot. And not OC good either.
I have been running 8 banks of them to make them run as fast as possible and still mem only scores a 4.4 with Vista 64. not realy impressed with FB-DIMMS.
Good luck tho with those mobo's, have fun.
FB-DIMMS what a bad choice for a new motherboard.
I have been using them for a year now and do they run hot. And not OC good either.
I have been running 8 banks of them to make them run as fast as possible and still mem only scores a 4.4 with Vista 64. not realy impressed with FB-DIMMS.
Good luck tho with those mobo's, have fun.
The socket is actually called LGA-771. It stands for Land Grid Array. It is the Xeon 5000 series socket.
FB-DIMMs are fine for server use. For a gaming PC, I agree, FB-DIMMs suck. They do get really hot, Intel knows this and recommends a memory cooling fan be used on the Skulltrail platform.
Something doesn't sound right, are you running single sided FB-Dimms then? You should be able to get full quad channel bandwidth with 4 double sided sticks. I run 8 double sided 1 gig sticks and get a 5.9 in the vista test. 5.8 overall, only thing that isn't a 5.9 is the gaming graphics, SLI'd FX4500s only get 5.8 for gaming.
In comparison the Skulltrail test configuration gets a 5.9 in every category but memory performance. In memory performance it gets a 5.7. So the total comes out at 5.7.
zmjone2992
[H]ard|Gawd
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wow fx cards get a 5.9? Now I know for sure the winsat score is utterly worthless.
He's talking about the Quadro-FX cards from NVIDIA. The cards in question are the professional version of the Geforce 8 series and shouldn't be confused with the older Geforce FX cards.
See one here: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=4335932&CartID=done&nextloc=