Dell XPS 720
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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.
Article sourced from: Atomic
Maximum Power Computing
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