HotHardware - Asus Z7S WS Skulltrail Motherboard Sneak Peek

HotHardware - Asus Z7S WS Skulltrail Motherboard Sneak Peek: "The Asus Z7S WS features dual LGA771 sockets that support Intel Xeon 5000, 5100, and 5300 series processors of both the dual and quad-core varieties. The Z7S WS is built around the Intel 5400 and ESB2E chipset and supports 1600MHz / 1333MHz / 1066MHz / 800MHz front side bus speeds, it has six Fully-Buffered DDR2 DIMM slots, and a pair of Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit LAN jacks with teaming functionality. The Asus Z7S WS’ expansion slot configuration consists of two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, one PCIe x16 slot with an x8 electrical connection, and single PCIe x1, PCI-X, and PCI 2.2 slots. The dual x16 PEG slots are a differentiating factor for the Z7S WS because Intel’s D5400XS only supports PCI Express 1.1. The D5400XS, however, is outfitted with NVIDIA PCI Express switches which enable SLI, something the Z7S WS lacks. Also note that the Asus Z7S WS requires standard LGA771 heatsinks, whereas Intel’s Skulltrail mobo will work with a wider variety of LGA775 CPU coolers. We should also point out that the Z7S WS features a digital VRM, which significantly clears up the area around the CPU sockets and the PCB is 'only' 12' x 10.5', which is much smaller than the DX5400XS."

okay.... one question: What OS, in the enthusiast/consumer mass-market, is going to utilize all this horsepower? AFAIK, the only Windows OSes that will see this many cores are server editions not intended or truly suited for gaming... and I can't think of any other reason an enthusiast/consumer would need even half of this power. Sure, there's the (uncommon) science geek who wants to run through insane calculations in record time and has lots of money to spend... but that's not the masses.

I guess this type of board is not really designed for the masses. More to show potential of hardware, etc.

****Well, doing some quick digging around, it looks like I am somewhat mistaken (it happens a lot). Vista only supports two 'physical' CPUs, but the number of cores per CPU is not limited (by Vista, but obviously there are physical and scientific limitations until they are overcome). XP may even be the same in this regard, so I guess this isn't so far fetched after all.

With all this said, I am finding gaming on a PC more and more frustrating... not because of the format of that gaming, but rather the CONSTANT need to upgrade your hardware to keep up. I have to believe it is sloppy programing that requires so much horsepower, but I have nothing to back that up. However, my reasoning for this statement is based on what the XBOX 360 is capable of performing with so little in the way of hardware (other than the CPU, see this great comparison done by Paul Thurrott). While the CPU is a fast triple-core affair, the RAM is only 512MB GDDR3 shared between the system and the video card!! The Sony PS3 has similar specs and great gaming as well.

So, for gaming, I'm leaning more toward a console whose sole purpose is to provide great gaming. Moving away from thinking my PC has to be my gaming platform has made it feel SO much faster and not in dire need of an upgrade like it felt when gaming on todays latest titles. The money I would have to spend to upgrade it to handle the latest round of games could probably buy me TWO 360s or more... and the experience isn't that much better (if at all... that's really a matter of opinion and depends on the monitor you display the games on... the 360 hooked up to the PC LCD monitor will render basically as good as the PC, and your performance is a lot more stable since it's not trying to be a PC at the same time with all kinds of services running in the background). In fact, my video card, being no slouch itself (nVidia 8800 GTS 640MB) cost as much as an XBOX 360 Premium all by itself!!! Looking back, it was pretty much a waste. There are so many different parts involved for the whole package that my CPU essentially becomes the bottleneck.