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LOSTCIRCUITS
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| Intel's SkullTrail Extreme Platform Playground of the Titans | |
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(Author: Michael Schuette, February 10, 2008) |
Memory Subsystem
The SkullTrail Extreme board uses FBDIMMs in a multichannel architecture that abides by rules that are rather different from those applying to standard memory subsystems. In so far, it is a moot point to run conventional memory benchmarks and force the results into a data base that has very little in common with the specific board we have at hand. In other words, rather than reporting results based on false pretenses and then building interpretations on the results, we'll skip this part altogether.
CPU Power Consumption
One of the issues with SMP systems has been and still is the power consumption. We are not overly concerned with the overall system power, since a great deal of that depends on the peripherals that may vary from one system to another, rather, we are looking at the isolated CPU power consumption. Bear in mind that the measurements are taken directly at the PSU output, that is, before the 12V current is transformed into the actual CPU core supply voltage, which means that the efficiency of the voltage regulator modules has to be factored in when looking at the numbers.
Vista Idle Power
It was somewhat surprising to see the idle power consumption of the two Penryn-based cores in the 60W range. Moreover, whenever we tried to set the system in the Vista Control Panel to "Power Saving", it froze up immediately.
**As it turns out, though, the reason is that there are still a few issues in the pre-release BIOS in which some of the C stages were not yet programmed, the final release version will have full power saving capabilities.
Vista Full Load
Under full load, the SkullTrail shows itself in a much more positive light. Especially impressive is that a total of eight cores are in the same power league as the two cores on a Smithfield or Presler .
next page: => 3D Rendering and Power Efficiency =>
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