A couple weeks ago i was raving about my soon to be XPS with Dual-core proccesor and ATI Radeon Crossfire.. Who would have thought that 2 magazines "Games For Windows" and "PC magazine" could totally sway my opinion on the beast, The Dell XPS710 with quad core and ati crossfire..rated the worse out of alienware,falcon norrthwest,cyber power,Voodoo,and even gateways gaming PC... I WAS NOT HAPPY at all..why would a pc that costs a 1000$ less perform better??? I read more into the article and this was why....all the PC's (except for gateway) were using 2 of the new Nvidia 8800's versus the ati crossfire.They also had a higher memory clock..Dell was using older TECH So the problem was solved, Id have to make sure Dell XPS will have the new nVidia 8800 in it...Then ill be ready for Vistas and DirectX10 which is suppose to be the next-gen in pc gaming The article says the DELL is "qualifying" the nvidia 8800....... My question is ...how long will it take to qualify i am hoping to get this PC before February....considering my first idea was to get it for christmas.... Windows Vistas comes out supposedly in late january so do u think it will be qualified by then??? ALSO: Is quad-core that big of an upgrade from Dual-Core Ive heard that it isnt unless your running multiple programs like adobe,office,and other stuff like that When i get the PC ill either be playing a game...or have AIM,myspace,youtube,adobe,and gamrenders up at the same time Im currently using a HP with AMD athlon XP 3200+,200gb hardrive,nvidia geforce 5500(cant manage to get rid of it lifetime warranty) and just 512 MG ram. With this setup i cant play a song on itunes...with a cd in dvd,and cd rom drive, without lag..... Plus my PC has crashed twice while in Guild Wars... My pc has frozen many of times in use of adobe photoshop 7.so basically i can only use it for internet, checkers, and a expensive cd-player thanks to my 5.1 logitech speakers..
First off. If you are EVER!!!!! going to buy a gaming computer, build it. Even the ----ing stone age cavemen can do it. It's just a matter of putting a cord in the one place it can go. Second: Dells suck. Simply put, they're overheating overrated pieces of ---- that works about as well as my machine thats 8 years old. Third: Never get a Windows OS until AT LEAST 6 months after release so that drivers and whatnot are released and the OS glitches are removed. Hope this helps. If you need help assembling a system, I'll put a list of parts together for you.
the answer is simple... Dell overcharges also falcon northwest overclcosk their CPUs. a 3.66GHz Core 2 quad is a lot better than a 2.93GHz Core 2 duo. no bull---- about it same goes for RAM, Dell uses the cheapest ---- they can. and cooling.. see above. ========== as for quad being a big upgrade. Only if you're running a server or do a lot of media encoding otherwise no. ========== and the 8800s are beats so yes they do outperform ========== vista's overrated and driver support is ----. ========== LASTLY PC MAGAZINE IS CRAP. I got a year's subscription for free. There was not a single article in which the author was more knowledgeable on hardware than I. There benchmarks are shid and Biased(they compared an x1900 vanilla to a 7900GTX and declared nVidia the graphics king which is a bit wrong) did I mention PC magazine is crap? ============ another attestment to Dell. They have the highest profits in the computing industry despite the smallest percentage of their revenues dedicated tot heir actual product. READ MY LIPS COMPARATIVE ----.
Your longest post I've seen yet chris :lol: Chris wasn't meaning to be harsh, he just goes about stuff in a different way to you. Dell get real hot, they over heat, they're VERY loud (I can't leave my system on while I sleep because it keeps me up) and they use the cheapest ---- they can get then rebrand it. For example in my 1 YEAR OLD system it only has PCI technology which is EARLY - MID 90'S so I have to have an FX5500. And I'm pretty sure your machine outperforms mine, it must be majorly ----ed because almost any pc can play a song in itunes. Quad core is a waste of money for people who are going to be running 3 or 4 websites and maybe photoshop at one time. Dual core is even too much for that but I wouldn't even think of buying a single core processor atm. Vista is just a prettied up win2k with some un needed features. I'm not going to move up to vista until it actually has a set path.
yeah my moms a Dell tech...My back up plan is to get her to buy the parts like proccesor,graphics card,and other expensive hardware off for 30% off since she has has access to dell outlet... If i go this route it will prolly be Core 2 Duo, Nvidia 8800,the new dell ultrasharp whenever it comes out,2gb of ram, new gaming keyboard and mouse...And prolly like a 320gb hardrive My mom can build it ..Then she can say she built her first "Gaming' PC So... should i avoid dell supported RAM and hardrives,,, Also...noob question In SLI could i have both the Nvidia 8800 and 5500 together? and what that make a difference?? PS..my PC can run itunes BUT when i place a Cd into Dvd and cd-rom drive,,my pc stutters for like 15 seconds. ----yeah my mom has said that before...especially the laptop motherboards she has fixed like 10 this month
Avoid everything dell supported, you'd be better off with your current.. And no you can't run the 8800 and the 5500 together as only PCI-E cards are SLI compatible, and your cards model must match (unlike in crossfire, where you can run any 2 PCI-E cards). And about itunes, it's probably your optical drives.
The processors are the same, Dells cases are allright, more pretty than function but certainely not all that bad. Ram is probably good enough for real world performance, though it will lag in benchmarks because it's shid Harddrives aren't all that bad from what I know(though my step father insisted ona Dell and has 3 harddrive failures in 2 months go figure) same goes for CD drives their motherboards on pretty much everything are shid. PERIOD. Video cards are mostly fine. can only run SLi with like cards, so only two cards of the EXACT same model. Also the 5500 would bring the 8800GTX down even if they could be used in SLi, the 5500 has very mediocre shader performance. Dell' monitors are fine, LG makes them and LG makes pretty good monitors. ================ in short if you get everything 30% off, go for it I guess, just try to get your motherboard elsewhere(on say an online retailer or similar) also make sure that 30% off is really 30% off retail and not Dell's marked up price. ==================== EDIT: dell's are noisey? man every single one I've ever used is pretty silent... might just be your system.
I have a dell xps, my recommendation is not to get one, they are overpriced, if you build one you can get much better performance for a lot less, and you won't have to deal with dells custom MB/case ----. And they preload their pc's with so much ---- it can at times be very instable and slow responding.and dell CD drives are HORRIBLE both the dells I've owned have had multiple cd drive failures.
So on the way to the nearest city(i live in the middle-nowhere) i was listening to some Lamb of God and the sudden i thought "Hey mom lets go to a PC shop and get someone to make us a pc gaming build" She said "Ok lets pretend like we dont really know anything about computers I told him generally what i w anted.... So the sysytem came to about 2000 with operating system.. 1xNvidia 8800GTS might upgrade two,Core 2 duo 2.13,dvdd rive,cd drive,320gb hardrive western digital,600 wat coolmax power supply,CORSAIR 2gb ram (2x1gb) 240-pin,EVGA Nvidia n-fore 6801 Sli,XP His price was simply parts of labor and his fee of 120 to built it... Mom and i were like dam* Even with the dell discount i'll still get ripped off from dell..so ill go with yalls idea and create my own.. LOL they probably tack on an extra 200$ for the dell XPS case..I odnt think ill ever need up to 1.5 terabytes of storage or 3 hardrives... Im still going to to get the 20" Dell for 210 off topic.....Then for summer ill buy a SXRD(prices should drop again) for about 1600 with discount :lol:
Ok, here is what you should get. It's bang/$ will be great, and it won't cost 6 months car payments... maybe 2 months tho. CPU $317 Core 2 Duo E'6600 Motherboard $194.99 Asus P5B Deluxe OR THIS IF YOU HAVE ALL CORDS Memory $305 Team Xtreme DDR2-800 2x 1GB VGA $409 PNY Geforce 8800GTS Hard Drive $94 Seagate Barracuda 320GB Optical $30 NEC CD/DVD R+RW Case $150 Thermaltake Armour (Personally recommend this, I have it and it's awesome. Loads of space.) Power Supply $138 Silverstone ZF 560W Total is around $1680 (including shipping). You can probably find equivalent RAM from newegg, but that I just what I felt like posting.
that case is a favorite amoung PC enthusiast communities. as was said, it has lots of space, good layout a lot of features etc. I beleive ti's a decent case for water cooling setups as well.
It is. The manual actually includes the common ways people fit the pumps and Radiator. It also supports "Fanless System", meaning you can take all of the case fans out for more room, and the ambient temperature is supposed to stay at a good level.
