Introduction:

It's really easy to misinterpret what you see and hear in the media and over the internet. There's a lot more and sometimes you get a glimpse of something really important if you pay attention. Here at VH, we look for opportunities to get to know vendors and manufacturers alike. I think one the best ways to do this is to attend some of the Tech Shows and community functions. Not only do you get to see what it is they do and how they do it, you also get to see who they really are when it's more relaxed.

Over the last couple years, I've been attending various LANs and tech events looking for that other side we rarely get to see. InfernaLAN is just one of the many events sponsored by INTEL and wide variety of vendors and integrators including Patriot Memory, Corsair, BFG, S3 Graphics, IBuyPower, PowerPC, and Alienware.

It was here that I met many of Intel's finest incognito. These guys take their personal systems as seriously as any enthusiast, cooled with the latest DangerDen water cooled blocks and assembled in some of the sweetest cases created by man. I thought that if they are this much fun and cared enough about what they do to show off all these demo systems, then I really need to see what it is they do.

Well, a couple weeks after, I received a call with an invitation to visit Intel's mysterious Hawthorn Farm Campus where much of the desktop motherboard and processor magic happens. The dates were picked, test hardware assembled, and the tour schedule set.

I must say, it's not a bad drive from Washington to Oregon. There's a lot of inspiring scenery for clearing one's mind. The campus is hidden away in one the cleanest cities I've ever visited surrounded by endless coffee shops. Hey, it's the Northwest!

The New Intel:

Extreme Intel

For once, it was a really informative presentation which included details covering Intel's mission, product releases, updates, and new services. Some of the specifics, excluding processors, included the newest motherboards now hitting the shelves, future laptop platforms, and Intel's VPro service. This was also followed by a little Q&A.

First and foremost are the newest product releases. The latest motherboards to launch in final retail versions are the D5400XS (Skull Trail), DX48BT2 (Bone Trail 2), and DG35EC HD HTPC motherboards.

D5400XS Skull Trail

DX48BT2 Bone Trail 2

DG35EC HTPC

The Skull Trail is the only non-NVidia motherboard on the market at present (and possibly the future) that NVidia supports with SLI drivers. The beauty of Skull Trail is that it supports both Crossfire and SLI, which means you aren't locked in to into one graphics card supplier. It's a powerful dual socket LGA 771 motherboard which has set some insane overclocking records recently hitting the 6GHz mark. And yes, it comes on that sweet black PCB.

Dual LGA 771 Socket

4 - PCI-Express 16x Graphics

The ST's main purpose is to offer the most serious content creators a powerful dual-Quad processor option for all the most serious number crunching apps that require large amounts of resources. There is an updated chipset cooler that may very well replace the blank, black one currently being used.

Chipset Cooler Removed

nVidia & Intel CrossfireX

New Cooler?

The Bone Trail 2 is very similar to the original Bone Trail which offers DDR3 support among other standard features. The improvements are mainly made to the X48 Chipset supporting DDR3 XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles) 1600 Mhz which which worked like a charm later in the day during testing. The retail board now comes in jet black which looks pretty sweet compared to the test board used.

Bone Trail 2

Black Rules

The DG35EC is the first of five fully High Definition independent motherboards to answer AMD's and nVidia's own series. The DG35EC has a much more capable upgraded chipset with better integrated video that can perform HD encoding and/or decoding tasks rather than the processor. It's nice to be able to watch your Blu-ray and HD movies and still have a lot of CPU resource left to do other things.

Future models to release in the next few weeks is built around the DG45 Chipset, dubbed the DP45SG Skyburg (Extreme series), DG45ID Icedale (Media series), and DG45FC Fly Creek (Media series). The other two fit more in to the ITX category below.

DG35EC HD Motherboard

HTPC or Gaming

Two new Intel ITX form factors motherboards will soon arrive, one for the budget and one for a more powerful use. These two are the DG31L Granger Lake and D945GCLF Little Falls which are part of the Essential series. Right now, most ITX platforms have limited memory support, menial power saving features, limited audio support, and lack one valuable feature: scalability.

Of the two different ITX systems, the D945GCLF will house the new integrated Atom CPU solution to keep costs down. You may already be aware many hospitals have been waiting for a low cost, power efficient form factor that can be used in their monitoring systems. Imagine a mobile system that monitors a patients vitals, keeps records of their progress, treatment, transmits the data via a wireless connection, and needs less than 40 watts to function while connected to a battery backup.

The DG31L offers a performance chipset, extra memory slots, and a PCI Express x16 slot. You can also choose the processor you want and up to 2GB of memory. These form factors equate in to a very small PC in the kitchen for surfing, emails, and even music. If the integrated graphics aren't enough, add a performance video card and you now have one very small, very capable system that can serve as a desktop, HTPC, and gaming system.

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