Intel Skulltrail 3: 8 vs 4 Core Performance

Features
By Bert Toepelt
published

Test Setup

Operating System: Windows Vista Enterprise

We have recently switched to a different version of Windows for the benchmarks. Now, all benchmarks at Tom's Hardware are run on Windows Vista Enterprise. While this version is not available in stores, its performance results are identical to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate. However, we were forced to make this switch, since this is the only version that offers an Open License. This License allows us to activate Windows Vista over the Internet repeatedly, without having to make calls to Microsoft's activation hotline each time.

Windows Vista Enterprise

Hardware Configuration

We have updated the testbed system with new components, such as the graphics card, sound card and hard drive, in order to offer our readers results based on a platform that is both current and practical.

Hardware Setup

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System Hardware
AMD Platform AM2+(AMD 790FX)Gigabyte GA-790FX-DQ6 (Rev.1.0)AMD 790FX, BIOS: F3
AMD Platform AM2(Nvidia Nforce 5)Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe, Rev.1.03GNVIDIA nForce5, BIOS: 1001 (03/13/2007)
Intel Platform S775(Intel P35)Gigabyte P35C-DS3R, Rev. 1.0Intel P35, BIOS: F2o (05/11/2007)
Intel Platform S775(Intel X38)Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6, Rev. 1.0Intel X38, BIOS: F4 (09/19/2007)
Memory2x 1 GB A-Data DDR2-1066+ Vitesta Extreme Edition
DVD-ROMSamsung SH-D163A , SATA150
Graphics CardFoxconn Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTXGPU: 575 MHzShader: 1350 MHzMemory: 786 MB DDR4 (900 MHz, 384 Bit)
Sound CardCreative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
Power SupplyZalman, ATX 2.01, 510 Watt

Graphics Card: Foxconn Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX

RAM: A-Data Vitesta 1066

Sound Card: Creative x-Fi Gamer

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE 3200 AAJS

Bert Toepelt
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • 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!
    Reply
  • 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.
    Reply