Wednesday, October 31, 2007 10:50
Santa Clara (CA) – Every year, we try to spend some one-on-one time with the key companies we cover on TG Daily: Rick Hodgin is currently on a 2-day tour with Intel to find out about some of the latest products Intel is working on. The enthusiast Skulltrail motherboard with the “Seaburg” chipset. Read the latest on Intel’s first consumer dual-socket product here.
We have previously reported about a working Skulltrail version, but since IDF Fall much has happened: During my visit, Intel senior performance analyst Francois Piednoel unveiled a nearly completed Skulltrail prototype motherboard for the enthusiast overclocker.
Integrating the Seaburg chipset as well as two 771-pin “special” Xeon sockets, Piednoel told us that one of these systems has been overclocked in his lab to 5.0 GHz stable, and 5.2 GHz nearly stable. That system uses vapor cooling. The analyst mentioned he's using regular bathroom silicon around key parts of the board to keep condensation from becoming an issue. During Fall IDF he had a similar machine running just under 4 GHz with known BIOS limitations at that time which were keeping it from clocking higher.
It is no secret that Intel does not recommend overclocking their processors beyond specification. In our conversation, Piednoel was very clear on that point. However, he also indicated that Intel is well aware of the fact that overclocking takes place. “Since they are doing it anyway, would it not be better to do it right?” Damaging a system with overclocking is always a concern, but Piednoel assured us that Intel “now has enough on the board to make sure you don’t damage [the board].”
The Skulltrail board. Purple-4 PCI-x16 slots. Red-nForce 100 chips. Yellow-Overclockable CL3 FB-DIMM 800. Cyan-voltage regulators. Green-Dual power ports.
Kingston CL3 FB-DIMM 800 just received. Piednol had already overclocked this memory under extreme cooling, keeping memory at 30C.
Skulltrail has been billed as a large step up from Intel’s V8. While still a dual quad-core machine, it has been designed for more flexibility in overclocking. For example, just ahead of our demonstration Piednoel had removed the heat sinks which normally cover the voltage regulators for each socket (highlighted in blue). The white contact grease was still visible on the chips.
He explained that the numerous regulators were added to allow for very precise voltage adjustments with the large amperage, nearly 90 amps per processor at just over 1 volt (100 – 120 watts). These fine resolution settings were added to a special overclocking BIOS not present on regular Xeon boards. Piednol told us that “the voltage will be rock solid using whatever you can throw at the processors”. Similar design considerations were also added to the memory subsystem, allowing for independent overclocking and voltages. To accommodate this much power, dual input power ports were added.
Skulltrail has all the usual suspects, internal/external SATA, FireWire, USB, Ethernet, S-video, sound, etc. And it should be noted very quickly from the image that the board includes four PCI-x16 slots (highlighted in purple). Interestingly, Intel chose to use Nvidia nForce 100 chips (highlighted in red) for the motherboard. These provide bandwidth to drive four graphics cards. Skulltrail will not be limited to Nvidia graphics cards, according to Piednoel, but will also enable users to connect ATI Crossfire cards. However, the board will only accommodate a single-slot graphics card in the last slot if the second-to-last slot is populated.
Piednoel also provided more information about the “special Xeons” Skulltrail requires. While the board also supports “regular” Xeons, Intel has developed a “special” Xeon just for Skulltrail and enthusiast desktop-based workloads. In contrast to the regular Xeons, the “special” version are designed to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the board, Intel said. For example, Piednoel explained that these Xeons have “aggressive pre-fetchers,” which schedule data retrieval and utilize front-side bus bandwidth differently than traditional Xeons, something the analyst referred to as “tuning”. It’s this internal tuning and unlocked multiplier that differentiates them.
You get the picture, Skulltrail will be an exotic performance platform, more unlimited than anything we have seen from Intel before. That of course will affect the initial price. We did not get any number on that, but you could compare buying a Skulltrail PC to buying a hand-built exotic sports car. In terms of power consumption, the platform will be focused on performance only. You don't buy a Ferrari and then worry about the gas mileage.
Piednoel was initially showing Skulltrail with four 2 GB CL5 FB-DIMM 800 MHz chips as the typical memory, each consuming about 7 watts per stick - thanks to the new multiplexers added at 800 MHz which result in about 1 less watt per stick than 667 MHz parts. He explained that these CL5 chips should equal the performance of regular DDR2 memory. However, Piednoel also took it to the next level. He had received some fresh engineering samples that morning from Kingston - CL3 FB-DIMM 800 modules. All told, they provide 24 Gb/s maximum bandwidth, but with 3-cycle latencies.
Piednoel only had a little time to test the memory before meeting with us that morning, though he said he had already “undressed them”. This meant he had removed the heat shield, added enhanced cooling and overclocked them. When overclocked, he was able to keep them stable and operating at 30 degrees Celsius. While he did not provide us with a benchmark demonstration or any solid numbers, he said they were “insanely fast”. He promised to send us a machine in the coming months so we can verify his performance claims.
The board itself is not yet complete. Piednoel suggested it could be available for sale within a few months. There are at least two OEMs committed to producing the board, he noted, though the names are still under NDA. He said samples had also been sent out to other major OEMs as well.
One another note, while the board itself uses Socket-771 processors, it has the same clip connects as a regular Socket-775 for cooling. This allows for additional possible coolers.
From all outward appearances, this is Intel’s most aggressive attempt to give the enthusiast base exactly what they want: A highly overclockable board. As mentioned above, there is every indication that a 5 GHz system will not be cheap. The special Xeons, CL3 memory and whatever after-market water or phase cooling system will likely be in such the machine, along with all other high-speed peripherals, will cost big bucks.
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