Partnership
  • MSI is the official motherboard sponsor for Overdrive, providing Nehalem and P45 platforms for the Championship.
  • HyperX DDR3 modules are specifically engineered and designed to meet the rigorous requirements of PC enthusiasts.HyperX modules rated at DDR3-2000+are used in the Overdrive Championship
  • Samsung Hard Drives and Optical Drives - The Center of Innovation
  • 1,000 W modular 80plus high-efficiency EVEREST 1010 power supplies used for the Overdrive Championship.
  • Logitech's G11 gaming keyboard offers illuminated keys and 18 configurable multi-purpose keys plus a USB hub. The G5 Laser Mouse allows adjustable weight and up to 2000 dpi sensitivity for maximum precision.
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Intel Skulltrail - Benchmarks And Analysis

Intel Skulltrail Article Overview
Article Topics
Part 1 Intel Skulltrail Part 1: The Power of 8 Cores
Part 2 Intel Skulltrail Part 2: Overclocking and Power Consumption
Part 3 Intel Skulltrail 3: 8 vs 4 Core Performance

Benchmarks - Skulltrail 1.6% Slower

We compared the performance of the dual-socket Skulltrail system to that of a Core 2 Extreme QX9770 at the same speed and a Core 2 Extreme QX9650, which runs 200 MHz slower Compare Prices on Core 2 Extreme QX9650. All three CPUs are Penryns with completely identical features and functionality.

Skulltrail 2x Extreme QX9775
Games QX9770 QX9650
Warhammer Mark of Chaos -45.1% -38.3%
Supreme Commander -24.3% -22.0%
Unreal Tournament 2004 -15.9% -10.1%
Serious Sam 2 -13.0% -11.0%
Quake 4 -13.0% -6.7%
Prey -7.0% -5.5%
Audio
iTunes -4.8% 4.8%
Lame -6.0% 0.0%
Video
Pinnacle Studio 11 Plus -6.3% -2.5%
Xvid -20.5% -15.4%
DivX -13.0% -9.1%
Mainconcept H.264 Encoder 26.3% 34.2%
Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0 9.0% 15.3%
Clone DVD 2 -0.8% 3.8%
AVG Antivirus -6.3% -1.6%
WinRAR -0.8% 3.4%
Adobe Photoshop CS3 -3.2% 6.5%
PowerPoint to PDF 2.0% 2.9%
3D Rendering
3D-Studio Max 9 50.0% 59.1%
Cinema 4D Release 10 61.2% 70.1%
Total: -1.6% 3.9%
This table shows the performance difference between the dual-socket QX9775 CPUs and the single-socket QX970 and QX9650 processors.

Join our discussion on this article!


Talkback
Anonymous 08/19/2008 2:59 AM
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I am a 3D artist so this MoBo will be in my next workstation anyway, but for extreme gamers this review completely missed the point and by more than a mile! First off, looking through all the benchmarks, the overclocked skull trails are top of the bunch in nearly every test, and sometimes way ahead of the others, and anyone that’s going to buy this MoBo is going to overclock! Secondly, I don’t think anyone is going to care about a little extra fan noise for this kind of power, and most likely extremist gamers and 3D pros will use liquid cooling on the CPU’s and Southbridge anyway. But the biggest point of all that toms hardware completely missed is that this MoBo is future proof! Within the next 2 years, 8 core single chips processors will be a reality from Intel and AMD and game developers are going to take full advantage of this I assure you! So in 2 years time when you people that decided to buy a single socket qx9770 system because of this review, and are looking at the benchmarks of people running 8 core systems on the latest games, you’ll probably be cursing toms hardware for this dumb review and feeling sick to the stomach that its upgrade time again, while the people that don’t believe everything toms hardware says is “the law“, and don’t have their heads firmly squeezed up toms dark and scary place, and that are capable of free thinking, will have a huge smile on their faces that their systems brought 2 years ago can still compete with the big boys and that they wisely spent those few extra $$$, £££ or €. I’m certainly not going to let a few games running ever so slightly slower in the now, putting me off buying a MoBo that will run the next gen of kick ass games 1 or 2 years from now. Dumb review toms Hardware dumb!

Anonymous 09/10/2008 4:14 AM
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Intel BIOS release 1140 officially supports FSB overclocking and memory ratio overriding. FB-DIMM 800 sticks are also way cheaper now than 6 months ago and I guess they will score sky high with active cooling and low latencies. what about a new testing of the platform with a couple of X5272 to show how easily they cross 4GHz? As my point of criticism, this article should stress the price of the skulltrail is less than half of a single QX9770/QX9775 processor and building a 1P intel system with nvidia chipset can be way harder than this 2P offering.

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