Introduction



What has gotten into Intel to redesign a server motherboard to be fully compatible with AMD-Ati's CrossFire and Nvidia's Sli? Their processor line-up is already beating the competition and the high-end cpu's are mostly quite pricy. Two expensive cpu's, one expensive motherboard, four expensive memory sticks and two expensive video cards make ... an expensive system. My first question when hearing about the SkullTrail innovation was "who's going to buy this?". As noted before, this is being launched as the ultimate gamer's platform, but what gamer is capable of paying for this kind of setup? I always figured that the average gamer is about 20 years old, so I started to browse the internet for more information and this statistics came up:

UK gamers:

The average gaming age is now 23+.

38.2% of the UK population is an active computer gamer.

51.2% of British men and 25.1% of British women aged 10-35 play games regularly.

The average computer gamer has been playing for over 10 years.

On average, gamers play for 11 hours per week.

27.2% of all active gamers in the UK are women.

The average age of the UK female gamer is 30-35 years old.

US gamers:

The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.

The average game buyer is 40 years old.

38% percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (30%) than boys age 17 or younger (23%).

In 2005, 25% of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999.

44% percent of game players say they play games online one or more hours per week. In addition, 32% of heads of households play games on a wireless device, such as a cell phone or PDA, up from 20% in 2002.

Source: www.theaveragegamer.com

So, Intel's aiming at the group of people that has the possibility to spend money on their gaming system. But at what price? At the website of Tones we'll configure a complete high-end setup including keyboard, mouse and monitor. You'll find the price information on the last page of this review.



Before we continue our review, I'd like to spend a few words on the shop that made it possible to review this SkullTrail system, namely Tones. Tones has been around for quite some time now and has been growing to be one of the largest shops in Belgium. You can order from an extensive stock and offer a special feature which is called 'lowest-price-guaranteed'.

Tones send some high-end videocards along with the SkullTrail system in order to test what's the best gaming setup at this moment.

Let's review, people!!