woohoo, spicy stuff for the extreme high-end people!

With 8 cores over two sockets to keep it busy, I'd expect more RAM than the 4 GB speced as the shipping configuration. I've got that much on a single Quad.

Of course you won't need to worry about heating the room it's in either way.

Way to severely cripple an otherwise godly system Falcon...

there are probably .5% of gamers that can afford this.

complete waste,thanks for devoting attention and resources that won't help the majority intel.

Thats probably not a very good price/performance ratio. I wonder how many games can utilize 8 cores?

...things are going in the right direction :)

At least the game developers have proven they are more than capable of making games that quite literally no system out there can play at ultra high settings/resolutions.

While I would not exactly call this effort catching up to the games out there it is a start. Try knocking 15k off the price tag.

I realize anyone ready and willing to spend this kind of money really doesn't care.

But the GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards is long in the tooth to be commanding top dollar.

Might as well throw in dual NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 GPUs providing the largest frame buffer (1.5 GB per GPU)

I'd like to see a game where you team up with your friends to take on a single super-soldier. That would require an extremely good AI. This much processing power would afford it.

Long in the tooth, hmm. You got something faster? Sure it's over a year old but... theres not really anything that can do much better.

There are many ways to look at it:

#1) From a current price standpoint/offering you could cross fire 3 - 3870 X2's (it cost 150 to 250 cheaper per card) from AMD for the the cost of two OLD 8800 ultra cards

Giving you 3 GB ram, 6 GPU's, DX10.1, pcie 2.0 compatibility and high def hardware decoding

The above seems to be a comparison no brainer from a current market standpoint


#2) From a current performance standpoint you could again cross fire 3 - 3870 X2's from AMD

The X2's have been given the nod slightly over the ultra in sheer performance on a single card basis (removing the 150 to 250 price savings)

And this comparison was performed with nvidia drivers for ultra at its optimum and ATI's at its newest/incomplete.

Starting with the best game call of duty 4

www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/page15.html

www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/page14.html

www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/page13.html


#3) Quad SLI of 8800 GTS hmmmm this would need to be tested. But since 8800 GTS in sli has a price and performance lead on a single X2 it would be interesting.


#4) Since Nvidia is now opting to hold back its new gpu to late 2nd QTR to 3rd QTR. And instead will push this phoney die shrink old GPU line up as they did with the 8800 GTS card.

The crime is labling this crap 98XX now. They should call it what it is 8800X2. This is a huge dissapointment. Switching from a performance leader to responder is not cool.

So I guess 8800X2 errrr 9800X2 will have to do. Supposedly 30 - 40% performance increase over the ultra and beating out the 3870 X2's


#5) Since this is an enthusiast launch and we're talking about money no object types. You would think intel could knock on the door and ask nvidia for their latest busting at the seems 99XX cards or ATI for the R700.

I mean you can't tell me these bleeding edge guys wouldn't mind being next gen guinea pigs.


#6) I jokingly said "Might as well throw in dual NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 GPUs providing the largest frame buffer (1.5 GB per GPU)"

But the telsa's can be purchsed for $650. I could be wrong but I do believe they do DX 10 just as the quadro's and equally leave off high def decoding. 10 to 15K for a system hell why not?

Ok I want everyone to think a bit... when you say Lamborghini Diablo it means something. Despite the fact the car was first released in 1990 it is still outrageously fast even by today's standards and such cars tend gain in value once they start becoming rare classics. There is no shame in claiming ownership of one.

However if I told someone my gaming rig is an overclocked Pentium 166 with a whopping 64 MB of RAM and the latest 3dFX card running on a 1.5GB HDD, I'd be pretty cool in the geek realm in 1997 but a joke today.

This is why uber PCs make absolutely no sense, not even for the rich and comparing them to high-end cars is misleading and false advertising...

Coming soon to a low end PC near you! This is the future folks! PC's are finally getting to be significantly faster. Basic video editing and conversion will be easy and fast on every new machine out with time!

I think the comparison is quite accurate.

A car that will go 225 mph has about the same practical utility as a Toyota on a road that has a speed limit of 75 mph. People still by them.

Why? Simple. Status symbols; a desire to create envy in the mind of another, and to be the focus of that envy. "I can afford a half a million dollar car"

I bet you they have underestimated demand at Intel; I bet every boutique OEM bundles this up as "God's Workstation"

Just because your budget doesn't allow such purchases in no way means that mine excludes such an indulgence. I think skulltrail looks good on paper, I cant wait to try it out. Surely I am not the only one.

replyer - "theres not really anything that can do much better"

I gave ya many options... What do you think?

Where did ya go bud? Did you faint that your beloved ultra can be beaten?

Skulltrail...

what a exciting speed it has