Criticisms and Issues
Although found to be an extremely powerful computing platform, Skulltrail has been criticized by media outlets for being "ahead of its time". This is in part due to the lack of support for multi-core computing with many popular game engines at the time, in addition to the extremely high price of the components involved. The use of FB-DIMMs due to the workstation chipset has also been pointed at as a major limiting factor for Skulltrail. although this limitation can be mitigated by purchasing specially designed Kingston HyperX FB-DIMMS that have a lower latency than generic FB-DIMMs
The base Skulltrail platform consists of an Intel D5400XS mainboard which cost upwards of US$600 when it hit the market as a standalone part. Computers based on the Skulltrail platform also require high-output power supplies for both the CPU and graphics cards, along with a computer chassis capable of accommodating the motherboard, which is based on an Extended ATX form factor design. However, Atomic has reported that they can accommodate cheaper Xeon server microprocessors that fit in the LGA-771 socket, which is corroborated by Intel's official processor support list.
Intel's Skulltrail D5400XS motherboard is made with two nForce chips. The Skulltrail D5400XS motherboard is now just one of the motherboards available, along with motherboards with X58 and P55 chipsets, that runs both nVidia's SLI and ATI's Crossfire platforms out of the box with public hardware drivers.
Read more about this topic: Intel Skulltrail
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