We've posted a myriad of information and preliminary benchmarks regarding Intel's upcoming extreme Octa-Core SkullTrail platform over the last few months, since attending the Intel Developers Forum this past September. In their booth at the Consumer Electronics Show, however, Intel disclosed a few more juicy details and showed off a couple of SkullTrail systems we thought you'd like to see.
Intel SkullTrail @ 4GHz Air and Water Cooled
The system on the left is a custom Alienware rig based on the Skulltrail platform that features a liquid-cooling system and a pair of GeForce 8800 Ultras running in SLI mode. The dual Core 2 Extreme X9775 processors in the system were running at 4GHz (10 x 400MHz), and according to the BIOS hardware monitor, the chips hummed along at a relatively cool 40 degrees while idling. The system's specifics can be seen in the CPU-Z screenshot above.
In addition to the Alienware system, the folks from Intel's performance lab also assembled an air-cooled SkullTrail system of their own, which also happened to be clocked at 4GHz. This system, however, used a pair of Thermalright air coolers on the processors. With these high clock speeds, and some relatively speedy DDR2-800 CAS 3 FB-DIMMs, the 4GHz SkullTrail rigs burned through the Cinebench R9.5 multi-threaded test in only 6 seconds and the Cinebench R10 benchmark in only 35 seconds.
Stay tuned for more on SkullTrail in the weeks ahead.
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
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