8 Cores, maybe 16?

[InTheCity]

Hi,

Just out of curiosity, why are there no Motherboards that support two I7 chips? (or other quad chips for that matter, besides xeon)


The sales guy at Boxx said my best option was to wait for the Nehalem Xeon architecture to arrive, but I'd be looking upwards of $2500 just for proc and mobo. Ironically if a mobo out there supported it, I could get close enough to that power with 2 x i7 940 chips that will have likely dropped to around $400 by time those Xeons hit the market (end of Q1).

More cores equals less rendertime for me in the 3d environment, so I'm really interested in knowing precisely what my options are when considering an 8 core, hell maybe even 16 core machines that can be built. I'm not into Macs at all, but if you can throw me a bone with regard to my monster dream machine I'd great appreciate it.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Actually those computers already exist. They are not Intel or AMD systems. The whizz kids are not playing games with them. Cost is in the millions.

 

[InTheCity]

Awesome, let me just conjure up a million bucks! *sigh*

I'm looking at a 8-16 core working workstation with a 5k budget

Any more wise answers?

 

[jkflipflop98]

For a chip to work in a multi-socket system, it needs special electrical circuitry to communicate effectively with the other sockets. That circuitry is not in normal desktop processors. They are only in Xeon's and Opteron's. Your computer store friend is correct, you should wait another month and pick up some new Xeon i7's. You're looking at 1500 - 2000 for the mobo and 2 chips to populate it.

 

[InTheCity]

I see.

I also read rumors regarding the Skulltrail 2.0, do you think this will be a viable option or will they punish the buyer and force them to buy the extreme edition processors.

 

[jimmysmitty]

^They will probably have a special edition version of the CPU made specifically for the Skulltrail. Although the weird thing is that Skulltrail supported any of the lower end cheaper Xeons that were basically the same as the desktop ones just made for dual+ CPU mobos.

So by the time Skualltrail 2 comes out there will probably be decnet priced Core i7 940 equivalents that will work with it as well as a special Extreme Edition for it.

 

[InTheCity]

Sweet deal, thanks again for the info.

 

[werxen]

out of curiosity - isn't the skulltrial system a huge bust? i heard you do not get double performance in anything and would be lucky to see half a speed increase in ANY app.

 

[gamerk316]

out of curiosity - isn't the skulltrial system a huge bust? i heard you do not get double performance in anything and would be lucky to see half a speed increase in ANY app.

Thats more or less typical. Of course, most server side apps have gotten past 95% scaling decades ago, its the consumer market that needs to catch up...