DH Review: Intel Skulltrail Platform

Zardon · Feb 10, 2008, 08:40 PM

Read The Review Here
________________________________

Skulltrail. Even the name sounds mean. If you haven't heard the codename before now then we have a treat in store for you today. Skulltrail is a high end desktop PC platform based on Xeon class workstation processors. How does Dual Cpu, 8 Cores, four graphics card slots, dual 1600mhz front side buses with a total of 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth grab you?

Great, now that I have your attention, let me preface the testing. Driver Heaven missed the NDA launch a while ago. Not because we were being lazy, but we decided to spend considerable time with the system and explore some avenues no one else has touched upon yet, such as installing a full set of four modules to get Quad memory bandwidth and testing it with both high end Crossfire and SLI components, we also worked with Intel and received a newer BIOS for testing, but more on that later.

If this isn't enough we then decided to overclock the hell out of it with watercooling to give you guys the best and most thorough review we can. If you are lucky enough to have the money to afford a system like this when it is released then you will definitely want to know how it performs under every situation, both with real world testing and with synthetic benchmarks.

Zardon · Feb 10, 2008, 08:45 PM

Lelisevis · Feb 10, 2008, 08:53 PM

The extra time you took was well worth it, excellent review of jaw-dropping hardware. Wouldnt like the electricity bill at the end of the month though. I get the feeling the room it was set-up in got a bit toasty, it would certainly keep you warm in the winter.

Congrats DH on an outstanding review.

Falstaff · Feb 10, 2008, 09:19 PM

a new benchmark has been established I'd wager..excellent review.

Zelig · Feb 10, 2008, 09:25 PM

Awesome...

No legacy ports is nice, I'd even like to see the pata connectors for optical drives gone.

Would aircooling at a reasonably low volume be possible for that rig, or does it put out too much heat?

***Veridian3*** · Feb 10, 2008, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

Would aircooling at a reasonably low volume be possible for that rig, or does it put out too much heat?

For the stock speeds it wouldn't be too much of a problem, something like a coolermaster cosmos for example would be ideal

**dj_stick** · Feb 10, 2008, 09:35 PM

jealous
so very jealous

damn powerful system, really thorough review

mike2h · Feb 10, 2008, 09:41 PM

thx for a terrific review of an awsome platform! ty for all the time & effort.
now if i can just win the lottery....

Falstaff · Feb 10, 2008, 09:52 PM

I see it as a damn good graphics platform OC'd at 4 and with CS3 running and a monstrous monitor..thats my dream config. Even from a purely pedestrian standpoint as I am, it sure compares favorably against the V8.

geraldmango · Feb 10, 2008, 09:56 PM

bloody nora, thats amazing. CPU power galore.

Great review Z, very thorough, great to see the quad mem scores too, heard a lot about that but no one seemed to cover it.

Maybe CS4 will use all 8 cores. would be interesting to see filters running on that sucker.

Vikingod · Feb 10, 2008, 10:40 PM

That was probably the most thorough review I have read in years, and it was totally worth it.

Now, the matter of boxing it up and sending it to me, my address is....

IvanV · Feb 10, 2008, 10:48 PM

Congratulations on your great work on this article, I am fully impressed. The system is amazing overall, but it wasn't the sheer performance that took me by surprise, I was more or less expecting that, it was the power consumption so much lower than the V8 (which otherwise mostly put up a good fight). I usually don't care about that aspect too much, but this time I am making an exception. Also, the performance scaling is great. To make it short, this really seems to be the ultimate system for anyone demanding high CPU performance.

Vikingod · Feb 10, 2008, 11:10 PM

I'm surprized the gaming benchmarks we're more impressive, even Crysis didn't seem to require the power.

The OCing is unbelievable though, though who are into that are going to want to save your pennies.

Zardon · Feb 10, 2008, 11:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lelisevis

I get the feeling the room it was set-up in got a bit toasty, it would certainly keep you warm in the winter.

Yes, I had to put on an airconditioner with both it and the IntelV8 running. The test room got really warm without it. With the side panel off, you could really feel the heat escaping - a portion of this however did come from the graphics cards.

Also with regards to the watercooling, I have to say those Corsair Nautilus 500's for an entry level "all in one" configuration do a fine job, however after 3 or 4 hours gaming the water got rather warm (at 4.2ghz with the higher voltage), they still coped admirably though. I am sure however that someone thinking of buying this system would invest in a high end configuration costing 3 times as much. Load temperatures would probably drop a further 5-10c.

All in all though, I have to stress just how rock solid the platform is. Just like the Intel V8 system these machines rarely, if ever BSOD. I think the Intel V8 has BSOD'd ONCE in a year, which I put down to a beta set of drivers. I have yet to see the Skulltrail doing it. Perhaps the fully buffered memory has a bit of a hand in this.

For those interested in the whole fully buffered memory deal there are plenty of great reads about it on the internet and a good place to start is the wikipedia pages.

"Fully Buffered DIMM architecture introduces an Advanced Memory Buffer (AMB) between the memory controller and the memory module. Unlike the parallel bus architecture of traditional DRAMs, an FB-DIMM has a serial interface between the memory controller and the AMB. This enables an increase to the width of the memory without increasing the pin count of the memory controller beyond a feasible level. With this architecture, the memory controller does not write to the memory module directly, rather it is done via the AMB. The AMB can thus compensate for signal deterioration by buffering and resending the signal. In addition, the AMB can also offer error correction, without posing any overhead on the processor or the memory controller. It can also use the Bit Lane Failover Correction feature to identify bad data paths and remove them from operation, which dramatically reduces command/address errors. Also, since reads and writes are buffered, they can be done in parallel by the memory controller. This allows simpler interconnects, more memory bandwidth, and (in theory) hardware-agnostic memory controller chips (such as DDR2 and DDR3) which can be used interchangeably. The downside to this approach is that it introduces latency to the memory request."

Will be interesting to see how this story develops over the coming months......

***craig5320*** · Feb 11, 2008, 12:07 AM

Monster job on a Monster review for a Monster system.

Can really tell the work you've put into it Allan really nice job, system looks amazing, to think this could be an entry-level PC in 5 years time ;-) maybe not...

swimtech · Feb 11, 2008, 01:06 AM

Killer review Zardon - thoughtfully thorough as never before! The flaming skull is just outstanding too!

DJ - I'd be getting a bit giddy if I were you, considering this review!

Alex · Feb 11, 2008, 01:12 AM

what a review ! all the information I ever needed, and then some. Between this and the X2 article you guys put up a week or so ago DH is smokin hot at the minute !

I am very very impressed with Intel getting the power consumption down so low, especially considering the performance. Where on earth are AMD to answer all these processors? It really is a one horse race right now.

**dj_stick** · Feb 11, 2008, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swimtech

DJ - I'd be getting a bit giddy if I were you, considering this review!

haha my system won't have quite that much power… only 2.8ghz per CPU, and a single 8800 GT…

i'm not complaining though

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Feb 11, 2008, 04:38 AM

best review to date of hardware on DH imo...

but any person that will buy this for leisure and gaming, you are a f*cking moron! for video editing this is DAMN nice to do a business write off for.

humonous · Feb 11, 2008, 09:40 AM

yeah I agree with pimpsta. best review ive seen on any site, never mind DH.

system is a bit overkill for gaming , but its a sweet technological demo of what we might be running in a few years to get the most out of games.

I love the rendering times, if I could afford it, would be on my list. just out of my league.

LukeK · Feb 11, 2008, 09:41 AM

took me about an hour to read this!

fantastic review DH, was very pleased to see the quad memory performance as well as a lot of the real world testing.

longhorn1000 · Feb 11, 2008, 09:45 AM

Zardon, you need to do more reviews on DH man. This was an incredible piece of work. I was particularly interested in the quad interleaved performance, makes quite a difference with all 4 running. Nice design too man.

me972 · Feb 11, 2008, 03:14 PM

AMAZING review... great reading.

any chance we open a compatition which only i'm in..

and giving away this system to the winner (again me...

)????

thanks Z.
me972

Falstaff · Feb 11, 2008, 06:21 PM

I would like to buy one, I am curious about the price in dollars?

Alex · Feb 11, 2008, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falstaff

I would like to buy one, I am curious about the price in dollars?

Zardon listed the estimated cost on the conclusion page. probably around 4-5k for a full system I think.

One good thing from reading this article. I bought a QX9770 a week or so ago (cost me quite a lot as they do

). Anyway ive had nothing but trouble with it and I figured it might be the power supply. After reading the review and seeing Zardon giving his personal recommendation on enermax's site News I went and bought one today. Quite expensive but all my crashing and problems have been solved !

Thanks Enermax and Dh, what a brilliant power supply that is.

brutusmaximus · Feb 11, 2008, 07:13 PM

lol, quite funny this. After reading this review I went and bought an Enermax Galaxy 1000w too as I was having some hard locks in SLI. They have now gone. It is a killer supply, glad to see someone like Zardon giving a personal recommendation for it. quality product.

brutusmaximus · Feb 11, 2008, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dj_stick

haha my system won't have quite that much power… only 2.8ghz per CPU, and a single 8800 GT…

i'm not complaining though

When do you get it? is it a prebuilt or you are building it yourself? What Xeon's are those? 5345's ? (might be wrong).

LukeK · Feb 11, 2008, 07:21 PM

I need a new power supply myself. I went and bought a hiper and it was rubbish, should have bought an enermax, as my last one lasted me through 3 systems.

Anyone seen a good deal on the Galaxy 1000w in the USA?

Zardon · Feb 11, 2008, 07:25 PM

Glad to hear you guys are having a good experience with the Enermax Galaxy 1000. For the last year or so I have seen, first hand how reliable and strong this PSU is within our test beds, I dont think I have ever seen the rails drop below reference levels no matter what we had in the systems.

I don't recommend something unless im positive its the highest quality. I have several at home in my own systems, wouldnt have anything else in them after spending the last two weeks with Skulltrail.

geraldmango · Feb 11, 2008, 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LukeK

I need a new power supply myself. I went and bought a hiper and it was rubbish, should have bought an enermax, as my last one lasted me through 3 systems.

Anyone seen a good deal on the Galaxy 1000w in the USA?

zipzoomfly have it for under $300 right now Enermax EGX1000EWL Galaxy 1000W Power Supply Retail at ZipZoomfly

Might get one myself, my coolermaster one is ancient and makes a hell of a racket. Dont need 1000w right now, but by next year who knows? buying a good PSU is a 3-5 year investment IMHO. (this PSU uses industrial grade components as well so its lifespan should in theory be top notch).

Huge reserve output capacity (1,100 watts peak)
Excellent build quality with industrial grade components
Two transformers for two independent +12V rails (CPU and peripherals)
Large assortment of connector options (hard-wired and modular)
Support for up to 4 CPUs, 4 video cards, and 24 drives
Five +12V outputs (up to 75A)
Good efficiency along with Active PFC
Quiet operation (at lower power levels)
Backed by a 3-year warranty

Feb 10, 2008, 08:40 PM	#1
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	DH Review: Intel Skulltrail Platform Read The Review Here ________________________________ Skulltrail. Even the name sounds mean. If you haven't heard the codename before now then we have a treat in store for you today. Skulltrail is a high end desktop PC platform based on Xeon class workstation processors. How does Dual Cpu, 8 Cores, four graphics card slots, dual 1600mhz front side buses with a total of 25.6 GB/s of bandwidth grab you? Great, now that I have your attention, let me preface the testing. Driver Heaven missed the NDA launch a while ago. Not because we were being lazy, but we decided to spend considerable time with the system and explore some avenues no one else has touched upon yet, such as installing a full set of four modules to get Quad memory bandwidth and testing it with both high end Crossfire and SLI components, we also worked with Intel and received a newer BIOS for testing, but more on that later. If this isn't enough we then decided to overclock the hell out of it with watercooling to give you guys the best and most thorough review we can. If you are lucky enough to have the money to afford a system like this when it is released then you will definitely want to know how it performs under every situation, both with real world testing and with synthetic benchmarks.

Feb 10, 2008, 09:19 PM	#4
Falstaff Old Codger Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: USAFA Posts: 19,047 Rep Power: 206	a new benchmark has been established I'd wager..excellent review. __________________ "Inspiration is always a surprising visitor."

Feb 10, 2008, 09:25 PM	#5
Zelig HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Canada Posts: 3,187 Rep Power: 69 System Specs	Awesome... No legacy ports is nice, I'd even like to see the pata connectors for optical drives gone. Would aircooling at a reasonably low volume be possible for that rig, or does it put out too much heat? __________________ --

Feb 10, 2008, 09:41 PM	#8
mike2h DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: norcal Posts: 6,483 Rep Power: 89 System Specs	thx for a terrific review of an awsome platform! ty for all the time & effort. now if i can just win the lottery.... __________________

Feb 10, 2008, 09:52 PM	#9
Falstaff Old Codger Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: USAFA Posts: 19,047 Rep Power: 206	I see it as a damn good graphics platform OC'd at 4 and with CS3 running and a monstrous monitor..thats my dream config. Even from a purely pedestrian standpoint as I am, it sure compares favorably against the V8. __________________ "Inspiration is always a surprising visitor."

Feb 10, 2008, 08:45 PM	Thread Starter #2
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177

Feb 10, 2008, 08:53 PM	#3
Lelisevis Howlin at the moon Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 1,663 Rep Power: 0	The extra time you took was well worth it, excellent review of jaw-dropping hardware. Wouldnt like the electricity bill at the end of the month though. I get the feeling the room it was set-up in got a bit toasty, it would certainly keep you warm in the winter. Congrats DH on an outstanding review.

Feb 10, 2008, 09:56 PM	#10
geraldmango DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 85 Rep Power: 0	bloody nora, thats amazing. CPU power galore. Great review Z, very thorough, great to see the quad mem scores too, heard a lot about that but no one seemed to cover it. Maybe CS4 will use all 8 cores. would be interesting to see filters running on that sucker.

Feb 10, 2008, 10:40 PM	#11
Vikingod Int'l Fish Liaison Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: By the light of lamp I sit and type... Posts: 16,187 Rep Power: 109 System Specs	That was probably the most thorough review I have read in years, and it was totally worth it. Now, the matter of boxing it up and sending it to me, my address is.... __________________ *How You Can Help DriverHeaven By Using Digg*

Feb 10, 2008, 10:48 PM	#12
IvanV HH Assassin Guild Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,655 Rep Power: 280 System Specs	Congratulations on your great work on this article, I am fully impressed. The system is amazing overall, but it wasn't the sheer performance that took me by surprise, I was more or less expecting that, it was the power consumption so much lower than the V8 (which otherwise mostly put up a good fight). I usually don't care about that aspect too much, but this time I am making an exception. Also, the performance scaling is great. To make it short, this really seems to be the ultimate system for anyone demanding high CPU performance. __________________ Our Folding@home stats:

Feb 10, 2008, 11:10 PM	#13
Vikingod Int'l Fish Liaison Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: By the light of lamp I sit and type... Posts: 16,187 Rep Power: 109 System Specs	I'm surprized the gaming benchmarks we're more impressive, even Crysis didn't seem to require the power. The OCing is unbelievable though, though who are into that are going to want to save your pennies. __________________ *How You Can Help DriverHeaven By Using Digg*

Feb 11, 2008, 12:07 AM	#15
*craig5320* HH Administrator Join Date: May 2002 Location: Manchester, UK Posts: 8,282 Rep Power: 428 System Specs	Monster job on a Monster review for a Monster system. Can really tell the work you've put into it Allan really nice job, system looks amazing, to think this could be an entry-level PC in 5 years time ;-) maybe not... __________________

Feb 11, 2008, 01:06 AM	#16
swimtech HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: North Carolina Posts: 4,040 Rep Power: 122 System Specs	Killer review Zardon - thoughtfully thorough as never before! The flaming skull is just outstanding too! DJ - I'd be getting a bit giddy if I were you, considering this review! __________________ It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Feb 11, 2008, 01:12 AM	#17
Alex Driverheaven Lover Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 260 Rep Power: 43	what a review ! all the information I ever needed, and then some. Between this and the X2 article you guys put up a week or so ago DH is smokin hot at the minute ! I am very very impressed with Intel getting the power consumption down so low, especially considering the performance. Where on earth are AMD to answer all these processors? It really is a one horse race right now.

Feb 11, 2008, 04:38 AM	#19
BiGBrOwNPimpsta HH's #1 Hustla and Pimp Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: The Dirty Dot Posts: 7,706 Rep Power: 105 System Specs	best review to date of hardware on DH imo... but any person that will buy this for leisure and gaming, you are a fcking moron! for video editing this is DAMN nice to do a business write off for. __________________ Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music \| Logitech Z-5500 THX 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers \| 2 Lite-On 20x S-ATA Burners \| Logitech G700 Mouse \| Logitech MX5500 Bluetooth Keyboard*

Feb 11, 2008, 09:40 AM	#20
humonous DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Jun 2005 Posts: 164 Rep Power: 43	yeah I agree with pimpsta. best review ive seen on any site, never mind DH. system is a bit overkill for gaming , but its a sweet technological demo of what we might be running in a few years to get the most out of games. I love the rendering times, if I could afford it, would be on my list. just out of my league.

Feb 11, 2008, 09:41 AM	#21
LukeK DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 158 Rep Power: 59	took me about an hour to read this! fantastic review DH, was very pleased to see the quad memory performance as well as a lot of the real world testing.

Feb 11, 2008, 09:45 AM	#22
longhorn1000 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 70 Rep Power: 50	Zardon, you need to do more reviews on DH man. This was an incredible piece of work. I was particularly interested in the quad interleaved performance, makes quite a difference with all 4 running. Nice design too man.

Feb 11, 2008, 03:14 PM	#23
me972 HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Dec 2003 Posts: 696 Rep Power: 0	AMAZING review... great reading. any chance we open a compatition which only i'm in.. and giving away this system to the winner (again me...)???? thanks Z. me972 __________________ Intel 2600K - ASRock Fatality1 Pro(Gen3) -16GB Ram 8-8-8-24 - M4 128GB

Feb 11, 2008, 06:21 PM	#24
Falstaff Old Codger Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: USAFA Posts: 19,047 Rep Power: 206	I would like to buy one, I am curious about the price in dollars? __________________ "Inspiration is always a surprising visitor."

Feb 11, 2008, 07:13 PM	#26
brutusmaximus DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 520 Rep Power: 74	lol, quite funny this. After reading this review I went and bought an Enermax Galaxy 1000w too as I was having some hard locks in SLI. They have now gone. It is a killer supply, glad to see someone like Zardon giving a personal recommendation for it. quality product. __________________

Feb 11, 2008, 07:21 PM	#28
LukeK DriverHeaven Lover Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 158 Rep Power: 59	I need a new power supply myself. I went and bought a hiper and it was rubbish, should have bought an enermax, as my last one lasted me through 3 systems. Anyone seen a good deal on the Galaxy 1000w in the USA?

Feb 11, 2008, 07:25 PM	Thread Starter #29
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	Glad to hear you guys are having a good experience with the Enermax Galaxy 1000. For the last year or so I have seen, first hand how reliable and strong this PSU is within our test beds, I dont think I have ever seen the rails drop below reference levels no matter what we had in the systems. I don't recommend something unless im positive its the highest quality. I have several at home in my own systems, wouldnt have anything else in them after spending the last two weeks with Skulltrail.