Optix

The future...stay tuned CES 2010.

Twitter

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iPlayer

I'm curious as to what kind of public they are targetting with that board.

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Sihastru

Me

Looks great, pricing and supported CPU's (only 1366 Xenons I think) list will make or break the deal.

grajasekar

Two 1366 socket CPUs in one PC sounds like overkill if you ask me....

comp_ali

Two intel six cores plus 48 Gb ram , that will be enough for gaming I think

Tyrsonswood

I'd own one........



Of course I can't afford one, but it would find uses if I could.

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kris23

Precursor to Skulltrail II?

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Optix

That's my thought initially, Kris but Intel has had the Skulltrail II rumor mill going for quite some time now, at least in some of the enthusiast circles I frequent.

This is either one of those "Hey, look what we did!" products or it is being marketed to people with more money than brains.

To me even the X58 platform is overkill. I'll stick with my bang/buck budget builds.

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crowTrobot

Well EVGA always has been an enthusiast brand despite their increase in mid-range releases lately.

I for one cannot wait to see what that thing can do. That northbridge heatsink looks pretty damn serious. Maybe its water-block ready.

Judas

if you recall Z had the 2nd eddition of the skulltrail solution with 8 cores and 16 total using HT.... that would be come up on nearly a year ago now.

Now what i find interesting is that the cost of these boards and the cpu's is actually getting quite shockingly low

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Optix

Low in comparison to what they were priced but I would hardly consider a $200 CPU or what I am sure will be a $300 board low.

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comp_ali

Hehe , I doubt you can find an single i7 board for less than 250$ or even 300 at least that what can I found here let alone be a dual i7 board.

Optix

Luckily prices here have come down some. A Gigabyte X58-UD3R can be had for $190 after MIR but it's the chip prices that kill you. The i5 750 is still $220+ no matter where I look.

This dual 1366 board is strictly an e-peen enhancer.

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SeraphicSorcerer

I don't even think you could call it SkullTrail..

You'd have to call it Hal9000 :P
lmao @ Optix

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Judas

200-400 bucks for an entry i7 isn't bad at all.... i mean the 1156 socket i5 and i7's are quite decent..

initally looking at them all i couldn't justify going for a i7 1156 over a i7 1366. The price difference between both is marginal, the motherboards are obviously a touch more for the 1366.. however the extra features and overal memory power is quite evident of being worth it.

However an i7 rig can be built quite cheaply now. My new budget machines are based on the i3 cpu's which are vastly superior to that of the E5200's that i've been using for the barebones cheap builds for the last year.

I want to move away from the 775 socket as i WANT room for upgradeing and longevity for my customers.

it's been a great socket with a long life, but it needs to be retired.

DDR3 is cheaper then DDR2 now... and has potentially for much higher capacities not to mention speeds.

but i could see that above board retailing for about 600-900 bucks.

the cpu's the cheapest ones that'll work might be anywhere between 900-1500 bucks each

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Bolletje

U wunt moar picture?



7 PCI-e 16x
2 * NF200
Special 6 pin for power
Only Xeon E55xx support.

comp_ali

What IF I want to install no PCI-E Card , still 7 PCI-E are overkill.

Sihastru

Skulltrail was really compact compared to this board. If it can't fit in normal (E-)ATX cases... then it's a server board. Too many PCIe 16x connectors.

Possible changes: Reduce the number of memory slots per CPU to 3. Play araound with the slots. Drop the funky NF200. One is fine. Give me independent PCIe slots (8x/4x. but do make them full 16x electrical). Give me two PCI-X connectors and make them compatible with PCI 2.x.

Thanks in advance

Judas

i still don't understand why anyone would be complaining about PCI-e x16 slots.....

I wouldn't get it simply due to the nvidia chipset

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Lowfat

I wouldn't really call the NF200's a chipset. It is just a bridge chip. If you are only going to use 2 of the PCIe x16 slots, the NF200's should be used.

I think it is great that eVGA is stepping in on the MP workstation boards. I know dozens of people who will jump all over this as this is the only single MP LGA1366 board out there that will be able to overclock.

It is a shame that Intel locked MP support to only Xeons, otherwise I would also be all over this.

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imagination

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!

Sihastru

It's not the PCIe x16 slots I am complaining about, it's the fact that at least 4 of them will be controlled by the two NF bridge chips. This means a lot of limitations when it comes to what devices and in what configuration you can use the PCIe slots.

Let's consider one NF bridge "controls" two PCIe @ full 16x. If you put a video card in one of the PCIe slots, can you use a PCIe 8x RAID controller in the other one? (I don't think you can, but I am asking, maybe I got it wrong)

Judas

A critical component of the boards chipset being a single nvidia chip still is the problem.... i really don't care, i've seen far to many nvidia chipped devices that have failed miserably or has very little to no reliability.

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Lowfat

You can put any device in the PCIe slot. I know of many people who who do so on NF200 enabled boards.

It is also a shame they didn't just put on two Tylersburg chipsets instead of the NF200's. I can't imagine it would be all that much more expensive. And this way you get 72 PCIe lanes.

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slugbug

I'm pretty sure the target audience for these boards will be folders. Two 6 core processors with HT enabled will fly through those bigadv work units. Add 7 Nvidia GT3XX series cards and watch your electricity meter spin. I can't imagine how big of a power supply you would need to power all that.

Judas

1200watt would be a good start..

But i like the concept of crossfiring 6 5770's and slapping a nvidia gpu in for physx

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Optix

I think I peed a little.

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Lowfat

It really depends on how overclockable this board will be. Most of the time multi processor boards have pretty weak overclocks. I get around 35,000 ppd on my 4.8GHz i7. I can only imagine how 12 cores at that clock speed would do.

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iPlayer

Can you do 6 gpu crossfire already?

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crowTrobot

^4 is still the maximum IIRC.