System 2:

SK system two had two ATI Radeon HD 3870X2 in Crossfire. The rest of the system was standard configuration with a main drive, secondary drive, and DVD ROM drive. Interestingly, the ATI cards didn't see a great deal of performance gain from a second X2 card. Lee was successful in achieving 22,000 3DMarks with 06 on a single Bone Trail 2 where as the second card just barely helped break 24,000 3DMarks. This is further proof that the Catalyst drivers can still use some work to better access the second Crossfire card.

Dual HD 3870X2 1GB Graphics

Back Side

Again, this system is far more capable of content creating than video games. The avid gamer isn't going to be picking up this system for sheer sake of gaming. Now, the most extreme fanatics wanting the world's current fastest gaming platform just might. Being able to run your choice of ATI or nVidia graphics cards does have its benefits.

3DMark06 23364 @ 1024 x 768

Again, neither of these systems has any problem handling a little 4 GHz overclocking. Another big bonus is always the Yorkfield's default 1600 MHz Front Side Bus. That's pretty beefy compared to the Penryn's 1333 MHz FSB.

System 3:

The Bone Trail 2 system is a beast of a single socket X48 Chipset motherboard. It not only worked perfect with every graphics card on the table, it also shouldn't have any incompatibility issues with any graphics card you use. With any 9800 GTX, 9800 GX2,  three cards, you're going to get some extremely playable frame rates. If nothing else, rest assured that this is also a very stable platform with a very nicely tuned BIOS. The settings are among the most comprehensive yet.

Bone Trail 2

This is a very well tuned platform that really shines with good Quality memory. We had OCZ DDR3-1600 (7-6-6-24) and Patriot Memory DDR3-1866 (9-9-9-27) modules on hand. Pushing the motherboard near to its maximum was fairly easy with either kit. The X48 chipset loves to move the memory bandwidth which ultimately means more all around performance.

Bone Trail 2 Patriot 1600 MHz

Bone Trail 2 OCZ 1600 MHz

The water cooled SK system can handle 4.4GHz processor overclocks easily, where as the air cooled system was using some standard coolers which limit the processors to about 4.2GHz at the most. The blue LED CPU cooler on the Bone Trail 2 is the cooler shipping with the latest Quad Core Extreme processors. It cools better than any stock Intel cooler ever shipped, but it doesn't quite have the cooling capacity of an aftermarket heat pipe cooler.

3DMark06 13360 @ 1280 x 1024 - 4GHz

Granted, 3D application testing doesn't always show the benefits of a multi-core processor. But, it's fun to show off your system's capabilities. The crazy thing about 3DMark06 is that ATI's 3870X2 handles the benchmark better than Nvidia's 9800X2. But, then the tables are turned when it comes to actual 3D performance and Nvidia scores higher in most video games. Because of variables like this, measuring Multi-Core processor performance with 3D apps doesn't always paint the proper picture.

3DMark06 13442 @ 1280 x 1024 - 4.2GHz

However, 3DMark and Cinebench 10 can be really useful 3D tools for measuring your system's processing power during 3D rendering. This utility is more of a content creator's best friend for gauging performance when considering something like the Quad Core Extreme. In testing, the Skull Trail's dual sockets simply do very, very well in the benchmarks. The Bone Trail 2 is comparatively slower, but it's faster than previous Quad Cores and crushes any single core system.

Closing Remarks:

And now to answer the final question we hear all the time. Why hasn't Intel taken AMD out? The answers are more insightful and strategic than you think. Despite the fact that Intel was the one who gave AMD access to the X86 architecture which brought us the Athlon 64 era, without that competition there would have been fewer technological advancements. Having AMD's competition has spawned many development and working concepts, some of which have worked out great. It's because of that rivalry that we have things so good.

Allow me to give you a little insight of the people I met. Everyone all seemed to enjoy what they do, quick to help out the person next to them. It reminded me of my military days where everyone did their assigned job and that remained your primal focus even under stress. That's really an important and admirable skill for any team to succeed.

These are down to earth people with the many of the same interests which includes a pilot or two. Getting to see the Intel facilities from the air was all pretty cool, even if the ride was a little bumpy. But, that's how success is right? Pushing on despite the bumps.

We'd really like to thank the Intel Extreme Team for a great opportunity to see inside the world's most successful processor creator, play with some toys, see some new arrivals, and learn a lot about what they really do behind closed doors. What more could we show you to top the trip? How about some of the test toys. Stay tuned, we'll have more of our own Skull Trail, Bone Trail 2, and DG35EC m-ATX HD tests to show you soon.

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