"This may have been due in part to the Alpha nature of the BIOS. We know it’s Alpha because the POST screen displayed a warning message and while we had no problems with system stability it did take a fair while to boot in to Windows Vista."

Hahahahaha....

"did take a fair while to boot in to Windows Vista."

Lol.

Ill just say that again

"did take a fair while to boot in to Windows Vista."

That made my day... Even this hardcore mega fast PC (yes yes I know not a full PC) still takes "a fair while to boot in to Windows Vista."

Now Im off to clean up the coffe I just spat all over my computer.

...can it run on high settings on this?

Finally Intel have pulled their finger out and put together a board that the money-no-object-water-cooled-behemoth-loving-LAN-showoff gamers will no-doubt snap up at the first available opportunity.

It's surprising to see that the 8800GT cards are able to keep pace (in most cases) with the AMD/ATI offerings...

It makes me wonder what the benchmark scores might be were this board paired with 8800GTX or ATI HD3870 cards...?

that'll change with new games as the programmers become more multithreaded/SLI compatable

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would seem that this is more or less the current Mac Pro (1600MHz FSB, DDR2-800 DIMMs, 8800GT, 3GHz SATA connectors, PCI Express 2, dual 3.2GHz quad-core Xeons, etc.) The Mac supports up to 32GB of RAM and has 4 PCIe2 slots, though it doesn't have the eSATA connectors. There are other minor differences of course, but it would seem that it's more or less equivalent. However, I suspect the Mac runs a bit quieter and you get a well-built aluminum case with it for a bit less money. (Aside from that whole UNIX-y OS X thing, which I won't even want to get into :-)

Are you thick?

Dunno if you know this but they are testing out an Alpha motherboard, not some packaged computer. Its a showcase for what Intel might be able to do in the future.

and if you wanted something with the V8 in it you could go Dell for cheaper and better (minus the shiny case, because those are oh-so important when shopping for workstations or servers).

Yes, the case is mucho important, especially when I have to sit near it the whole day long to earn the money which bought that beast....