Intel Vpro with SCCM 2012 SP1

I am looking in to using SCS to provision clients for use with SCCM 2012.  There are directions here and here on how to integrate that I am researching.  I have a couple of questions for someone who has done this already.

1. The SCCM documentation states that SCCM 2012 SP1 only supports AMT up to version 6.1.  Is this for provisioning only or will the Out of Band Management Console not work with newer already provisioned AMT version machines?
2. For the Configuration Method, with admin control mode does the provisioning server need to be setup with a database?  I would like to use the SCCM primary site server to install SCS, but we are using SQL 2012 and SCS 8.2 doesn't support SQL 2012.
3. What are the benefits of using a database with the SCS server?

Thanks