Dell XPS 720 Desktop Review
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The XPS 720 looks likes it
fell off the back of Doc Brown’s time-travelling, fusion-powered
DeLorian DMC-12. Of course, no DeLorian, sci-fi or conventional,
was built with a quad-core processor or USB ports.
Lending strength to its sexy
first impression is the front and rear-mounted LEDs. With
two sets of tiered lighting on the front fascia and a single
set of LEDs over the rear IO ports, the lights not only add
character to the system, they’re very useful when it
comes to plugging in connections at the back of the unit.
These LEDs can be programmed from within Windows to change
colour, strobe, and more. This definitively adds to the ‘bling’
factor.
acked with a Core 2 Quad Q6600,
4GB of DDR2 memory and an NVIDIA 8800 GTX, one would expect
this system to be a beast in the performance stakes. With
styling reminiscent of an 80’s sports car, you can’t
help but think of the performance as being reminiscent of
an 80’s computer.
The 3DMark06 score reached
11049 marks. This may not seem bad – the 8800 GTX pulls
the system over the line in the graphically-intensive tests
and the Q6600 covers the CPU tests with its almighty four
cores. Once the memory is isolated from these components,
however, the system performs much like an E6600 dual-core
in single-threaded applications. Horrifying stuff.
In the Super Pi 4M calculation
the XPS 720 returns an utterly humiliating and shameful score
of 2min 6.890s. This is a solid thirty seconds slower than
an equivalent system built by the average enthusiast. The
reason for this massive performance gap is down to the configuration
and specifications of the RAM.
To get the ball rolling down
a steep hill of ‘OMG, why?’ the 4GB of memory
is supplied in the form of four individual modules. Any enthusiast
is aware of the downfalls from such a configuration. These
include, and are not limited to: increased strain on the chipset;
the potential to lose tight timings; potential to lose the
ability to run high frequencies; loss of overclocking headroom;
and poor memory access. And just as the doctor of bad performance
would suggest, the Dell XPS 720 is hit by many of these configuration
issues.
Unfortunately, the bad news
doesn’t stop here. With the system packed with 4GB of
memory, but only running a 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium,
the 4GB, by default, cannot be accessed by the operating system.
Therefore Windows shows 3GB due to the memory address space
taken by other components such as the 768MB on the 8800 GTX.
There is a workaround for this issue, though Dell did not
appear to have implemented it.
In addition, not only is the
memory limited to a lowly DDR2-667 frequency, it runs on extremely
slack timings of 5-5-5-15 2T. No worries, we thought, we’ll
just jump into the BIOS and pull the pants up on the slackers.
We almost died inside when
we found the BIOS utterly empty. Feeling as if we’d
just walked into an abandoned Wild West town, complete with
tumbleweeds, we poked our head around the place to see whether
anything could be salvaged.
Much to our dismay, there was
still nothing. We couldn’t change the CPU multiplier
or FSB, let alone touch the voltages. Not just the CPU, though
– the voltages of anything. Not a memory divider or
latency setting in sight. The BIOS was, without a doubt, the
most barren BIOS we have ever ventured into, especially for
a system marketed at the enthusiast.
Replacing the motherboard with
something more potent will also prove a pain, thanks to the
BTX form factor.
Adding to the feeling that
the design wasn’t thoroughly thought out was the fact
that the two 160GB Western Digital Raptors were set in a striped
RAID array using the motherboard chipset’s in-built
support. This configuration creates great concerns for the
safety and security of any of the data stored on these drives.
An additional storage and backup drive would have complemented
the Raptors nicely.
It’s not all doom and
gloom though. What Dell manages to do well, it does very well.
The internal case structure, as well as the hardware placement
and wire management, is superb. Everything is precisely secured
to present an overall tidy and visually impressive system,
both on the inside and outside.
The system does have some strong
points, but as an enthusiast gaming system, it simply falls
short of expectations.
(Read more at http://www.atomicmpc.com.au)
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