Dual CPU gaming??

What's your budget?!! Like $7000++ !!
Seriously the CPU doesn't have that impact on gaming and SkullTrail is ridiculous in my point of view.
I'll seek some reviews and reply.

dual CPU has a negative impact on performance for games. ATOMIC magazine did an article on it.

dual CPUs are great for servers, but for gaming its pointless.

that rig will be nicely powered by an i7 870 with little to no bottlenecking.

I say go with the I7 975 if your on THAT kind of budget, the p55 motherboards only support dual channel memory.

dual channel memory is enough for games. i really cant imagine tri-channel will have any noticeable impact.

1366 was designed fro servers, you are really throwing away money if you buy a it for gaming.

go 1156 and put the saved money towards a better/extra video card unless you truly have money to burn.

The 1366 isn't a waste for gaming in fact it's the best platform now for multiple GPU configuration.
The 1366 isn't just for severs and a lot of high-budget upgraders are going for it now.
The i7 975 is the real waste of money here.
Tri-Channel does boost performance for RAM intensive applications (High RAM storage requirements, High RAM info replacement requirements etc.)

Medo

tomshardwares very own benchmarks showed that the 'limited' dual x8 pcie lanes of 1156 is not a bottleneck in any way.

i know its not JUST for servers, but it was designed for servers, thats its primary use.

yes tri-chanell is of some benefit, but for the majority of games you will see no difference.

obviously the 975 is a waster of money, but even the 920 only performs on-par with the 870, but is cheaper (especiaslly when the lower mobo costs are factored in)

i dont think 1366 is useless, and if i were a millionare i would build a 975 based rig immediatly, but otherwise there is no point. save some cash, get an almost equal performing processor/mobo combo for less, and get some better hardware.

^ +1  

^^ -0.5 The x8 x8 CF and SLI will bottle-neck next gen cards like HD5870 as its stock native bandwidth is higher than x8 by slight margins so the HD5870X2 won't have a chance here, That's why X58/1366 is for multi-GPU setups.

thanks, that's what I was thinking. It will be a few months down the road. This will be a one time deal. Budget will be 8-10K. I Really want the fastest I can buy for that, and the extra processor and ram will help with virtual machines.

I have a Quad monitor setup now, running Trifire 4870x2+4870. I have a Dell 30" 3008WFP, 2 Viewsonic VP2650wbs, and a 23" Acer H233H for remote desktop, and watching tv with my DRV box. I've been playing everything at 2560*1600 now. I'm impressed with the limited info so far on the 5xxx ATI series, but going to wait to see what the 300 series brings from the green side.

The dual processors I don't think would help much in the gaming, but will def help with everything else I do. I guess I should have asked more specific, are there any dual processor comobs (like dual 1366) that support multiple GPUs. As long as scaling is ok, I'm going with Quad SLI/Crossfire.

Is Skulltrail my only option this way?

im pretty sure it is. but again, i doubt you will find alot ,if any, programs that support multi-cpu threading.

if you are really set on multi cpu then go that way, but you may be better off going phenom II 965 for now, and keeping the spare cash to get a phenom IIx6 when they release since they use the same mobo socket.

obviously i cant say for sure, but im pretty sure that for non-server tasks an x6 core phenom ii would be better than two i7's.

be aware as well that the 300 series from nvidia won't be released until next year, so if you're going for the high-budget whole hog now it may be worth simply going dual 5870x2's.

Skulltrail is a server platform rigged for gaming purposes. it was destined to fail. Like others have said a good core i7 would be a better overall choice.

Look at Tyan MB's. The S7025 looks interesting. Intel also makes MB's (Duh!) Price out the intel w5590, it is a killer.

Dual cpu for gaming is waste of money.

I am pretty sure LGA1156 with 16 PCIe lanes will become bottleneck for Quad Crossifre 5870 X2.

Get LGA1366 with single i7 920 and overclock it around 4GHz and you will be good to go.

Go with the 1366, since you'd probably be buying 2 or 3 video cards again and that is where the i7(1366) shines.

The 1156 would be a severe bottleneck for your case.

The game bencmarks for Skulltrail that Intel released were really more for marketing/commercials. Also the price/performance ratio of FBDIMMs isn't really worth it.

the only purpose to have that much cpu power would be for somthing like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

^ lol. I love that video. Hey, anyone know what program he uses to launch all those programs at once?

I think I'm gonna end up going with a Liquid cooled 1366 setup. Thanks for your advice. I figured this was going to be the way I ended up going because I didn't see much support for PCIe x16 on the multicpu boards.

Thanks for all your advice. I'll def post when I have it built.

If you have bothered to look at any PCIe scaling tests for the 5870, the 5870 suffers from 5% less performance at 4x.

Way to go necroing this thread, this thread was created before the 5870 was officially released.