Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, Feb. 19, 2008. Intel today officially announced its Skulltrail Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform, based on a dual socketed D5400XS desktop motherboard that supports two Intel quad core processors, the most current of which is the Core 2 Extreme QX9775 Compare Prices on Core 2 Extreme Processors. The D5400XS supports either ATI Crossfire or Nvidia SLI multi-card graphics solutions.

See our reviews of the D5400XS-QX9775 combination

"For the team creating world-class games here at id, time is one of our most valuable assets," said Robert A. Duffy, Programming Director, id Software. "Having eight powerful Intel cores in a single machine helps our team create and test our latest titles at record speed. We have seen one of our most time-consuming asset generation processes cut from over 4 hours to under 20 minutes by utilizing all eight cores and threading the generation code. Long term this translates to better games on the market faster than previously possible."

The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX9775 is available now at an MSRP of $1,499 each. Estimated street pricing for the Intel Desktop Board D5400XS is $649. Platform components are sold separately. Several enthusiast PC manufacturers plan to offer systems based on this new platform starting today and over the next 30 days, including Armari, Boxx Tech, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Maingear, Puget Systems, Scan, Velocity Micro, Vigor Gaming, Voodoo, @Xi Computers and others.