New Intel Skulltrail vs. 780i Triple SLI on ExtremeTech
By Ron on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 1:24 PM PST In Computer, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Hardware
Earlier today, I told you about ExtremeTech’s budget gaming PC. Lest you you think that we don’t support the high-end PC gamer, let’s take a look at a bit more expensive solution.
If you are a high-end PC gamer, chances are you’ve worked with SLI before. If you’re not familiar with it, SLI is Nvidia’s multiple graphics card option. (Crossfire is the ATI equivalent). While SLI has been more dominant on the gaming side of things, Crossfire has held the edge in one area: it’s the only dual card solution that would run on Intel-based platforms. Well, at least until now.
Intel has released the Skulltrail, a dual-socket, workstation-class motherboard built on Intel’s 5400 core logic. Skulltrail is designed for small servers and/or high-performance workstations, and is equipped with two 771 Xeon-style sockets. More importantly to gamers, the 5400XS motherboard also uses the Nvidia Nforce 100 chips, which allows dual-card SLI.
The ExtremeTech folks have run a series of tests on this new platform, to see just how useful it is to the high-end gamer. While the platform stacks up well against conventional SLI builds, there are some drawbacks to it, including pricing.
For all the lowdown, check out the ExtremeTech article here.
via ExtremeTech
I was checking out a Skulltrail board the other day but the fact you have to use FBDIMMs with the 5400 chipset instead of DDR2 or DDR3 really puts me off.