Intel Corp. on Tuesday said it started to ship microprocessors and mainboards for the Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform (DSEDP) aimed at computer enthusiasts and gamers with no limits in mind and in pockets. The new platform offers the power of eight processing engines and up to four graphics processing units.

“When it comes to delivering innovation to the ultimate enthusiast, our new 8-core desktop platform is a winner. The ground-breaking Intel Desktop Board D5400XS enables the flexibility to pair a variety of quad graphics solutions with two of our fastest desktop processors. The result is stunning PC performance,” said Jeff McCrea, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s digital home group.

Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform (DSEDP) for gamers is based on Intel 5400 Express chipset (Seaburg) and supports two quad-core microprocessors with up to 1600MHz processor system bus, up to 128GB of PC2-6400 (800MHz) FB-DIMM memory, Intel virtualization technology and other capabilities. Intel Intel Desktop Board D5400XS mainboard offers four PCI Express x16 slots for graphics cards to support 4-way ATI CrossFire or Nvidia SLI multi-GPU configurations.

There is only one type of microprocessors compatible with the new DSEDP platform: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 chips in LGA771 form-factor. The model QX9775 processor is clocked at 3.20GHz with overspeed protection disabled (unlocked multiplier), utilizes 1600MHz processor system bus and features 12MB cache. Given that the newcomer is made using 45nm process technology, it sports all the advantages that the new Penryn family has. The latest extreme chips from Intel have thermal design power of 150W, therefore, needs very efficient and potentially noisy and/or expensive cooling systems.

With two quad-core processors and four graphics processing units systems powered by the new platform from Intel are likely to offer unprecedented performance that is not available neither from personal computers based on typical Intel Core 2 Extreme chips or on microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices.

“This dual processor platform is the fastest desktop PC we’ve ever tested in our labs, reaching a score of 6481 on 3DMark06 CPU and 20 160 on Cinebench 10 even while running at the standard 3.20 GHz frequency,” said Shervin Kheradpir, director of Intel performance benchmarking.

But the new Intel Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform (DSEDP) comes at a price. The Intel Core 2 Extreme processor QX9775 is available now at an manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) of $1499 each. Estimated street pricing for the Intel Desktop Board D5400XS is $649. Platform components are sold separately. Several enthusiast PC manufacturers plan to offer systems based on this new platform starting today and over the next 30 days, including Armari, Boxx Tech, Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest, Maingear, Puget Systems, Scan, Velocity Micro, Vigor Gaming, Voodoo, @Xi Computers and others.