Intel Delivers 8-Core Platform for PC

For those craving more performance than can be delivered by four processing cores and a single graphics card, Intel has introduced the new Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform. Formerly codenamed "Skulltrail," this platform supports two Intel quad-core processors, and offers a choice of multi-card graphics solutions. As HD video becomes more prevalent than ever, encoding and editing is a task that more power users are looking to their PC to do for them. Intel believes that this eight-core platform is capable of handling such workloads with ease. Each QX9775 processor offers 12 MB of L2 cache, a 1600 MHz system bus, and four cores each running at a brisk 3.2 GHz.To create a Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform, users would need an Intel Desktop Board D5400XS (which can support two quad-core processors), and two Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors. The QX9775 is available at a maximum street price of $1,499, while the D5400XS board comes for an estimated street price of $649...