Intel’s upcoming Skulltrail enthusiast motherboard up close and personal

Intel's upcoming Skulltrail motherboard taken up close and personal - Image 1News and images of Intel‘s newest “gaming platform” for extreme hardware enthusiasts just hit the web recently, and dozens of hardware discussions have been revolving around them. The Skulltrail motherboard seems to be picking up more than just hype, as the newest details to arise from images show Intel’s been making steady adjustments to the server-turned-extreme gaming motherboard. That and a little more at the full story.

Intel's upcoming Skulltrail motherboard taken up close and personal - Image 1

 

Okay Banzai Runners, listen up: since Intel‘s demonstration of the Skulltrail during the Intel Developer Forum back in late fall of 2007, there’s been much hype proliferating around the new “gaming platform” touted by the California-based semiconductor manufacturer. But now a new and improved prototype model popped up from the weaving nethers of the World Wide Web, and new images of the Skulltrail has got the hardware enthusiast in us all riled up.

But if you’re not all too cozy and updated in the techie scene, you would have missed out on the server motherboard turned extreme PC enthusiast gaming platform and its ability to wield a duo of quad-core processors. And if the eight-core CPU setup wasn’t enough to intimidate you, the Skulltrail also packs a killer NVIDIA MCP chipset (nForce 100) tag-team for dual CPU support and optimum NVIDIA SLI setups. Plus, they come actively cooled.

The images shown below now reveal that the Skulltrail might just be the uber dream platform to beat, since ASUS‘ Striker II Formula (based on NVIDIA’s nForce 780i chipset) touts but a single CPU socket for the Intel’s newest 45-nm Quad-core Extreme QX9650 or the next slew of Penryns to bust out of the woodwork by early 2008.

The standard fare of eSATA, USB, GigaLAN, and Firewire will join the board’s connectivity features. HD audio seems to be planned for the Skulltrail, though which audio chip or makeup to latch onto the board is as yet unclear. More on that and the rest of the Skulltrail’s specifications as we come across them.

 Intel's upcoming Skulltrail motherboard taken up close and personal - Image 1 Intel's upcoming Skulltrail motherboard taken up close and personal - Image 2

Via Hot Hardware

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *