
The Skulltrail code name follows the pirate-naming theme started with the "Bonetrail" code name for Intel's X38 motherboard. Intel was able to supercharge the board by making a couple of aggressive design decisions. Engineers built the board around the Intel 5400 workstation chipset instead of using its standard X38 or P35 desktop chipset. The chipset choice gives Skulltrail advanced features not available on normal desktop motherboards, such as dual-CPU support, but it also brings new requirements, including a new CPU socket, LGA771, and DDR2 FBDIMM memory. We aren't thrilled with the FBDIMM requirement, but the modules aren't too difficult to find and don't cost much more than unbuffered DIMMS.