At IDF Taiwan Intel decided to trump its own overclocking display by bringing an even bigger chip to the show; an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770. This beast has a 3.2 Ghz clock frequency and a 1600 MHz FSB, and will become the new flagship next year. This processor uses the regular desktop socket 775, but since the coming enthusiast platform “Skulltrail” is built upon the D5400XS chipset, also known as Seaburg, the QX9770 won’t work. Intel D5400XS is namely for socket 771, and will therefore use a different Core 2 Extreme processor than the desktop boards. It will still be called Core 2 Extreme, but be named QX9775 and cost $1,499 apiece (1Ku).
Over at HKEPC they’ve published a slide from an Intel presentation that reveals quite a lot about the upcoming Skulltrail platform (translated via Google). Amongst others we get it in writing from Intel self that there is not only SLI support, but actually Quad SLI support. This is due to the use of two extra NVIDIA MCPs located near the PCIe slots. There’s no mention of CrossFire, but we can’t imagine that Intel would cut out CrossFire in favor of SLI.
Alas, Skulltrail requires FB-DIMM modules, which are very expensive and runs at only 800 MHz, but on the other hand you can have as much as 8 GB of it.
Skulltrail is expected to arrive sometime Q1 2008.
