Dell Dimension XPS: Gaming with all the Trimmings

Dell Dimension XPS: The Test

The full suite of benchmarks was run with the Dell Dimension XPS gaming system. Dell shipped the XPS with an ATI Radeon 9800 XT video card, which was used for all benchmarks with the Dell system. Please keep in mind that all of our comparison benchmarks were run with the ATI Radeon 9800 PRO, which is slightly slower. The 9800 PRO and XT use essentially the same GPU, but the XT is clocked a bit faster than the 9800 PRO. For a better idea of how the two cards compare, please refer to our benchmarks in AnandTech's ATI 9800 XT review.

Memory timings are not adjustable on the Dimension XPS, so benchmarks on the Dell were run with the memory and setup as provided by Dell. We confirmed with CPU-Z that Dell runs the installed DDR400 memory at 3-3-3-8 timings. This compares to the 2-2-2-6 timings that we normally use with Mushkin PC3500 Level 2 or OCZ 3500 Platinum Ltd in our system reviews at DDR400.

Dell provided a complete installation on the test XPS and we made no attempt to reinstall. To provide the best test results under these circumstances, all co-resident applications and special services loading at startup were turned off so they would not load at boot. Benchmarks were installed and run from the nearly empty 500GB SATA RAID array. AnandTech benchmarks are normally run with sound disabled to remove the influence of varying overhead depending on the sound chip used on the board or video card. We, therefore, disabled all on-board sound on the Dell Dimension XPS to provide the most comparable benchmarks.

Dell provided the test XPS with an installation of XP Home, rather than the XP Professional, which is our normal standard. Since Dell considers the XPS to be a high-end machine targeted at the serious gamer, we compared the performance of the XPS to other machines and boards that we have tested and might be considered by a serious gamer. We included results from the Asus P4C800-E, a top 875P motherboard, and Athlon64 FX, Athlon 64, and Athlon XP 3200+ systems.

Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s):	Intel Pentium 4 at 3.2GHz (800FSB) AMD Athlon64 3200+ (2.0GHz) AMD Athlon64 FX51 (2.2GHz) AMD Athlon XP 3200+ (2.2GHz, 400MHz FSB)
RAM:	2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II 2 x 512MB Mushkin ECC Registered PC3200 2 x 256MB Corsair PC3200 TwinX LL (v1.1)
Hard Drive(s):	2X250GB SATA drives in RAID 0 Array Maxtor 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer) Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM (8MB Buffer)
Video AGP & IDE Bus Master Drivers:	Intel SATA RAID Drivers VIA 4in1 Hyperion 4.49 (August 20, 2003) NVIDIA nForce version 2.45 (7/29/2003) NVIDIA nForce version 2.03 (1/30/03)
Video Card(s):	AT Radeon 9800 XT 256MB (AGP 8X) ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB (AGP 8X)
Video Drivers:	ATI Catalyst 3.7
Operating System(s):	Windows XP Home (Dell Dimension XPS) Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards:	Dell Dimension XPS Gaming System Asus P4C800-E (Intel 875P) 3.2Ghz P4 Abit KV8-MAX3 Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 Athlon64 FX51 Chaintech ZNF3-150 (nForce3) Athlon64 3200+ MSI K8T Neo (VIA K8T800) Athlon64 3200+ DFI NFII Ultra (nForce2 U400) Barton 3200+

Recent performance tests on Athlon64, nForce2 Ultra 400 and Intel 875/865 boards used 2 x 512MB Mushkin PC3500 Level II Double-bank memory. The Athlon64 FX requires Registered or Registered ECC memory, so tests with the Gigabyte K8NNXP-940 were performed with Mushkin High Performance Registered ECC DDR400 memory. Previous tests of motherboards used 2 x 256MB Corsair 3200LL Ver. 1.1. Mushkin PC3500 L2 was employed to preserve the 2-2-2-6 timings that were used in tests with Corsair 3200LL Ver. 1.1. Both Mushkin and Corsair use the same Winbond BH5 memory chips in these modules.

All performance tests were run with the ATI 9800 PRO 128MB video card with AGP Aperture set to 128MB with Fast Write enabled. Resolution in all benchmarks is 1024x768x32.

For the fairest comparisons, benchmarks were recompiled for the Asus P4C800-E using a 3.2GHz Pentium4 processor.

Additions to Performance Tests

We have standardized on ZD Labs Internet Content Creation Winstone 2003 and ZD Labs Business Winstone 2002 for system benchmarking.

Game Benchmarks

We have added Gun Metal DirectX Benchmark 2 from Yeti Labs, the new X2 Benchmark, which includes Transform and Lighting effects, and Aquamark 3 to our standard game benchmarks. We will be adding other benchmarks in the near future.

The XPS achieved a new high in Content Creation, which has always been one of the better benchmarks for Intel Pentium 4 based machines. With the combination of the 3.2GHz P4, ATI Radon 9800 XT, and the SATA RAID, we see scores approaching 60 for the first time. The Asus P4C800-E should be in the same area, since it was also tested with a 3.2 and 9800 PRO, and the video card does not have a great influence on Multimedia Winstone 2003. The fact that there is still a wide difference between the Asus and Dell in this benchmark tends to indicate that the hard drive has a large influence on the final result, with the huge 500GB SATA RAID pushing the Dell score to new highs. Pentium 4 systems rarely perform as well in General Usage, and the Dell performs here about the same as the Asus P4C800-E system. The newest Athlon64 FX systems dominate this benchmark as we would expect.

You will see in our whole benchmark suite that benchmarks for the Dell XPS are literally all over the place. In some tests, the Dell performs exceptionally well compared to competitive systems and processors, while in other benchmarks, the Dell is inexplicably much poorer than we would expect. We shared our benchmarks with Dell's testing lab before publishing, and in their own test environment, their results were roughly on par with those we found.