Our “in house” test systems for this outing are mostly courteous of Intel EU.    The Intel® Desktop Board DX48BT II Extreme Series with and Intel® Core™2 Extreme Processor QX9650.  These are exceptional choice of parts now especially with the recent price reductions therefore this configuration should now be found within most studios starting as Mid Range desktop.   This is a superb resilient platform that just keeps pushing out the data without error, and those thinking about it, then look no further.   

Skulltrail, it’s been around for sometime now and still continues to amaze the many of its raw processing power.   Many have seen this configuration working flawlessly within the multimedia sectors; though as our want we took it one stage further to show the SoHo users that this mainboard configuration can be used successfully within the Workstation environment.   Within these scenario’s we aimed to show how powerful the set-up really is that we have shown today.  Although these are expensive parts of equipment the facilities that the board has to offer are huge and for the SoHo user taking their time in upgrading we decided upon showing this route today with a further look later on utilising both CPU’s.    Although Skulltrail is only PCI Ex 1.1 complaint, the results we have collated will astonish you all.

The mainboards, bios settings were left at default and it automatically adjusted the clock speed settings and voltages to facilitate the CPU’s and Memory to maintain the higher functionality which the mainboard has to offer.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the Mainboards & CPUs shown, Western Digital for the blisteringly fast VelociRaptor SATA Hard Discs, AMD for the supply of the FireGL V3700 professional graphics card.   Akasa for a majority peripherals required for this review and finally but by no means least; Corsair & Crucial for their supply of their exceptionally good memory for both systems shown.

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a solid choice on upgrade paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s each system has to provide.

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components. Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly.

Benchmarks and Software Used (32 Bit Mode)

The plethora of benchmarks available in this arena; one could spend all day in producing results if the time permitted, paralysis by analysis!  The clock ticked hard and fast against us therefore we did only have a very short time in which to complete this basic but factual review.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3
3DS Max SP2 Scenes
Cinebench 10
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 10.0 – Run All Tests ran at 1280 X 1024 Resolution.

So that readers will be able to see how much performance increase has been gained throughout the range SPECviewperf® tests by the individual cards.   We have split up into their individual test categories from each test system and run.    Each card completed the test etc on a clean system hard drive to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the system uptime.   Maintaining the fair play rules of SPECviewperf® we did not manipulate any of this mainboards functionality and left it at its default settings in which it was supplied.   Tests have been conducted and completed at 1280 X 1024 @ 60Hz in 32 bit colour.   Results that have been shown within this review are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® fair play rules.  Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right. 

The results speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system.  “Run Logs” the SPECviewperf®  tests are available to those of you who wish to see them.    Please e-mail the administrator here who will forward them onto you on a first come first served basis.    This may take some time to get back to you as on first out launches of this nature we are undated with requests.