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Dell XPS 710 Review December 07, 2006 Brandon Sandman Bell |
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Summary: Its got quad-processing cores, quad SLI, over a terabyte worth of hard drive space, and does so while running extremely quiet. In case you didn't know, the system we're discussing is Dell's XPS 710. Powered by the nForce 590 SLI chipset, this is Dell's flagship gaming system and it even supports overclocking. Read our thoughts on this system in today's review!
 Introduction | Page:: ( 1 / 14 ) |
But there are drawbacks to going the do-it-yourself (DIY) route. Most notable among them is the amount of time and effort it takes to research all the components, then put them all together to make a fully functional box. Along the way, you may spend additional time troubleshooting odd behavior and other problems that may crop up from your build. For instance, a lot of the early Core 2-ready motherboards were quirky when it came to RAM support. Certain memory modules just didn’t run well in these boards. Alan ran into this most recently in his Core 2 build.
This brings us to another downside of DIY: warranty/tech support. Quite simply, if you buy a completely assembled PC from Dell, HP, or Gateway, you know who to call if you run into problems – your system’s manufacturer. But who do you call if you built the system yourself? The issue(s) you may be running into could be caused by the motherboard, or perhaps the chipset driver that’s running on your motherboard, or maybe you’ve got a bad memory module or graphics card? Then again, it could be a bug with the graphics driver that’s causing the artifacts and other anomalies you’re seeing in games, or **gasp** perhaps it’s Microsoft’s fault and/or you configured something in Windows incorrectly. Perhaps it’s all of the above?
The problem is, if you aren’t an experienced system builder, you may have a hard time determining the culprit of your problems. And even if you’ve got 5+ years worth of system builds under your belt, you may still have a hard time diagnosing the cause of your problem. You may be ready to blame your motherboard, when the fault could lie elsewhere. And even if you do have the correct guilty party, often times getting in touch with the manufacturer can be difficult; with the exception of a handful of graphics card manufacturers (BFG, EVGA, and XFX being the most prominent), most component manufacturers don’t provide a 24/7 toll-free tech support hotline to call. Email is often one of the best ways to contact these companies, and you may not get a response for several days.
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To service this market, system builders like Alienware, Falcon Northwest, and VoodooPC, have been delivering high-end systems with aplomb for years, but these systems are prohibitively expensive. Now larger system manufacturers have entered the fray with their own high-end systems at competitive price points. Today we’re taking a look at one such system, Dell’s quad-core, quad-SLI, XPS 710. But is it good enough to meet the needs of an enthusiast? Read on to find out!
| BTX Case | Page:: ( 2 / 14 ) |
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The first aspect you’ll notice immediately about the XPS 710 is its unique chassis. Gone is the traditional beige box, instead in its place Dell uses an all-aluminum outer shell with a plastic fascia on the front and rear of the case. The fascia on our review system came decked out in Obsidian Red -- not our favorite color choice but certainly distinctive -- fortunately Dell offers two colors to choose from.
The case itself is one of the most impressive we’ve seen, as we mentioned it’s made entirely out of aluminum, but it has the heft of a system carved from a block of stainless steel! Officially the case weighs in just a pound shy 50 pounds, and after carrying the system up a flight of stairs, we certainly believe it.
This also makes working inside the system’s case a breeze in comparison to smaller system cases.
Another reason why the case is so heavy is because of the way it’s built – to cut manufacturing costs and save weight, often times case manufacturers will use thinner sheets of aluminum for the outer shell of the system chassis. This isn’t the case for Dell’s XPS 710 however, the outer aluminum clamshell used for the top and bottom, as well as the left and right sides of the chassis is several millimeters thick.
The aluminum case Dell uses isn’t prone to scratching either, as anyone with a Shuttle XPC or an aluminum case can tell you, many aluminum cases can be scratched rather easily. While the Dell chassis isn’t scratch proof, it is much less prone to nicks and scratches than many of the other aluminum cases we’ve come across.
The bottom line is that this case is built like a tank.
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Moving around to the front of the system, you’ll find that Dell uses drive bay doors to cover all of the system’s 5.25” and 3.5” drive bays. Our system came equipped with a 16X DVD-ROM drive and a 16X DVD+/- RW drive, as well as a combo 13-in-1 media card reader, but looking at the front of the system, you could never tell thanks to the drive bay doors. The system itself sports 4 external 5.25” drive bays as well as 2 external 3.5” drive bays. Inside the system you’ll also find an additional 3.5” internal drive bay just beneath the power supply unit (PSU) where you can house up to four hard disk drives.
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The hard disks are mounted on rails, so installation/removal is a snap, literally. Dell even includes extra SATA power and data cables so if you add additional drives, the cabling is already there and it’s even properly tied down for you! This is a really nice touch in our opinion.
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Getting inside the system is a snap. No tools are required, all you have to do is pull back on the cover release latch and then pull off the case cover itself. Voila you’re inside the system!
| Motherboard | Page:: ( 3 / 14 ) |
At the heart of the system is NVIDIA’s nForce 590 SLI chipset. The nForce 590 SLI never really made much of an appearance in the DIY market, with only ASUS picking the chipset up and even then only making a very limited number of motherboards, but Dell has been using the chipset for quite some time now on their XPS line, including the original XPS 700.
The motherboard Dell uses for the XPS 710 is largely the same as the mobo Dell used on the XPS 700, only its been designed to work with quad-core CPUs from the start (the XPS 700 can be made to work with quad-core although it’s officially unsupported because the motherboard lacks the required number of reference lines from the CPU to front-side bus for voltages and therefore it’s not backed up by the Dell warranty). The motherboard has been developed completely in-house by Dell and relies on the BTX form factor.
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While the motherboard is based on NVIDIA’s nForce 590 SLI chipset, it doesn’t support all the features of the chipset. For instance, the motherboard lacks the dual Gigabit Ethernet networking ports that the chipset natively supports, in addition, the chipset also lacks support for NVIDIA nForce 590 networking technologies such as Teaming and FirstPacket, as well as SLI-Ready Memory. Dell also limits RAID options to RAID 0 or RAID 1.
Dell says that the networking technologies weren’t provided in order to ensure standardization across their entire product line, instead Dell uses the same networking solution on all of their other Core 2 systems. On the memory front, Dell is looking into adding DDR2-800MHz support, but as of now the XPS 710 ships solely with 667MHz memory.
Even if you plug in 800MHz or 1066MHz memory modules, they’ll run at 667MHz, as the system’s BIOS doesn’t support SLI-Ready memory nor does it provide BIOS settings for adjusting the speed of the system memory.
This limits the performance potential of the system, particularly at lower resolutions where CPU/memory performance is more important. Earlier this year we ran performance numbers with memory speeds of 667MHz, 800MHz, and 1066MHz with Core 2 and found that the faster memory types could add up to 8% in some games at 800x600 but by 1600x1200 (the resolution you’re most likely to play at if you have a 20” LCD) we’re GPU-bound and performance was unchanged from 667MHz all the way up to 1066MHz.
Looking at the board itself, Dell uses a red PCB and the board supports enthusiast-level features such as rounded corners and a power LED. The North Bridge and South Bridge of the chipset are cooled passively – a heatsink/fan unit isn’t used nor are heat pipes. The chipset is cooled entirely with a simple aluminum heatsink. This is pretty impressive considering the amount of heat the chipset produces.
The layout of the board is pretty good. Airflow is improved by moving cables away from hot-running components like the CPU and graphics cards. Cable management isn’t that great however, there’s certainly a lot of clutter inside the system, while Dell does tie down the power and data cables for the SATA drives, none of the thicker BTX power cables are tied down, nor is the floppy data cable Dell includes with the system. Adding insult to injury, the cable isn’t rounded either and it’s bunched up next to the 120mm case fan which cools the graphics cards and other systems components at the bottom of the system.
Again, it isn’t a very elegant system, but it didn’t seem to interfere with the operation of any of the system’s components, and this isn’t as big of an issue thanks to the sheer size of the system chassis.
For connectivity, Dell provides eight USB ports, six on the backplate of the motherboard and two more USB ports up front, as well as two FireWire connections. The motherboard ships with two x16 PCI Express graphics slots, one x1 PCIe slot, and one x8 PCIe slot, as well as three PCI slots.
| Cooling | Page:: ( 4 / 14 ) |
The key to this cooling system is the front and rear fascias of the system itself. You see, the entire bottom portion of the front of the case is vented, as is the entire back of the case. On the other side of the front fascia lies a large 120mm case fan.
Air is sucked in from the front of the case, through the 120mm case fan, and from there across the system components.
Finally, the air exhausts out the back of the case. With a large 120mm case fan up front, the system can push a lot of air. It’s a very low RPM fan though, so the fan runs nearly silent, even up close with the case removed we could barely hear it.
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Sitting just above the 120mm fan is a slightly smaller CPU fan. Like the main case fan, it sucks in cool air from the front of the case and runs it through a large black plastic duct before it exits out the right side of the duct and ultimately outside the system case itself. Again, this fan does a very good job of keeping the CPU cool while generating very little noise. The heatsink unit Dell uses to keep the CPU cool uses a mixture of copper and aluminum: multiple copper heat pipes are attached to a copper base plate for drawing heat off the CPU, while a large aluminum heatsink then helps to keep the heat pipes themselves cool.
The CPU cooling system itself reminds us a lot of the high-end Scythe Ninja cooler, although the XPS 710’s cooler isn’t quite as large as the Ninja, but it does have more fins than the Ninja. The heatsink/fan unit is one of the only components inside the Dell XPS 710 system that you will need a screwdriver to remove, virtually everything else inside the system can be removed sans tools, including the hard drives and graphics cards.
Hard drive cooling
As anyone with a little knowledge of hard drives can tell you, one of the leading causes of premature drive failure is excessive heat. Quite simply, if you don’t take care of the heat near your drive(s), it can ultimately kill your hard disk drive prematurely. This can be avoided with just a little bit of cooling, but it’s astonishing the number of systems in the wild with little or no cooling near the hard disk drives.
Fortunately the Dell XPS 710 isn’t one of these systems. Dell includes a small fan directly adjacent to the hard disk drive bays, and again, the hot air from the hard disk drives exits out the back of the case, just like the rest of the system components and the CPU.
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With so much attention to detail on the system’s cooling, we were honestly a little surprised to see that Dell stuck with NVIDIA’s reference cooling on the dual GeForce 7950 GX2 cards our system shipped with. The stock 7950 GX2 cooler runs a little noisier than say the fan on the GeForce 7900 GTX or GeForce 8800 GTX, but once housed inside the Dell case we never heard the cards, even when running under load after an extended gaming session.
Dell really deserves credit for putting together such a powerful, yet quiet system. Again, our XPS 710 rig was equipped with a Core 2 Extreme QX6700, 1-kilowatt PSU, and two GeForce 7950 GX2 cards for quad-SLI, yet the system was still barely audible from a distance of 3 feet!
Dell has taken several steps to keep noise at bay. Part of it is the near silent fans Dell uses for the system-level components, but another part of the reason why the XPS 710 is so quiet is the thickness of the case, which helps to deaden the noise inside the case. Dell even uses foam inserts on the connecting points of the case cover, this helps to ensure that noise doesn’t escape the chassis, while also preventing air from escaping.
The only thing Dell’s really missing are dust filters for the fans themselves. Then again, considering that most of their clientele probably will never crack open their case, a dust filter probably isn’t necessary.
| Components (cont’d) | Page:: ( 5 / 14 ) |
Technically, there’s nothing stopping Dell from supporting slower Core 2 CPUs with the XPS 710, but for now Dell’s leaving quad-core exclusively to the XPS 710.
The XPS 710 can be ordered with a variety of graphics cards however. Not only does the XPS 710 support NVIDIA’s GeForce 7950 GX2, it also can be ordered with the GeForce 7900 GS 256MB, GeForce 7900 GTX, and Radeon X1950 XTX cards. All of these cards can be ordered with a single graphics card, or dual graphics cards. In the case of the GeForce 7950 GX2, this adds up to NVIDIA’s Quad SLI. Dell even supports hardware-based CrossFire for ATI’s Radeon X1950 XTX. This is the only NVIDIA nForce-based system we’re aware of that supports ATI’s CrossFire technology, normally you must have a CrossFire-compliant motherboard for this.
The system can also be ordered with a plethora of memory and display configurations (four DIMMs are in place on the motherbard), as well as offering two power supplies, a 750-watt unit and 1,000 watt PSU.
Our system was outfitted with the 1,000 watt PSU and it’s certainly an impressive unit: the PSU ships with four PCI Express power connectors for graphics cards. As a result, this is one of the few PSUs on the market that should have no problems working with dual GeForce 8800 GTX cards running in SLI mode (one of NVIDIA’s requirements for GeForce 8800 GTX SLI operation is that the PSU has all four power connectors built-in, using the PCIe power adapters that are so popular nowadays can lead to stability issues when the cards are under load in SLI). The PSU is also designed to deliver high power on the 12V rails, which are used predominantly by the CPU and GPU nowadays, according to the PSU’s specs up to 950W are available on the 12V rails, and 150W on the 3.3V and 5V rails.
Because of all this, we have no doubt that the XPS 710 is up to the task of powering NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX, including two of the cards in SLI mode. We’ve been told by Dell that they’re currently qualifying the 8800 cards for use with the XPS 710 and that they will begin offering the cards before the end of the year. They wanted to make sure that both the graphics card and driver were fully qualified before shipping to customers. Considering how early the current 8800 driver in particular is, this makes a lot of sense, if you recall some of the pre-release 8800 drivers had issues with HDR+AA in some games like Oblivion, as well as lacking support for SLI, so it’s good to see that Dell is taking their time with the process and making sure everything is in place and up and running smoothly before offering the cards for sale as an option to customers.
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Sitting underneath the graphics cards lies a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card. A lot has been made about the X-Fi cards Dell uses and whether or not they support Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. The answer is that the XPS 710 does support DD 5.1, but doesn’t support DTS.
It turns out that Dell uses the exact same sound cards Creative uses on their retail cards, only Dell doesn’t install the software codec for DTS playback. In order to hear DTS-encoded content in their full glory, you’ll have to install a DVD player that supports DTS. This is something you’ll want to keep in mind if DTS support is important to you.
Dell doesn’t support DTS playback at this time because their Sonic CinePlayer application lacks support for DTS, and they can’t use Creative’s retail software package because of compatibility issues they’ve discovered between the Creative software and CinePlayer.
One component we were a little disappointed with Dell however were the memory modules Dell uses on the XPS 710. Not only are they 667MHz DDR2 modules, they’re basic 5-5-5-12 modules manufactured by Nanya. Basically, the modules are very vanilla, there’s nothing exotic or high-end about them. We’d like to see Dell incorporate higher-end modules with faster speeds and tighter memory timings for use on a high-end system like the XPS 710, the modules even lack heat spreaders.
Overclocking
One cool feature Dell includes in the XPS 710’s BIOS is the ability to overclock the CPU. The method Dell employs is CPU multiplier adjustment: multiplier options of 11.0 and 12.0 are provided in BIOS, providing CPU overclocks of 2.93GHz and 3.2GHz with just a few keystrokes.
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Since multiplier adjustment is the only form of overclocking supported, the rest of the system components, including the motherboard, chipset, and graphics are all kept at their stock speeds, the only component that’s being overclocked is the CPU. And since Dell has done such a remarkable job of keeping the CPU cool, the Core 2 QX6700 can be overclocked fairly easily – we ran our system overclocked to 3.2GHz for approximately 24 hours running looped runs of 3DMark with no problems.
| System Setup | Page:: ( 6 / 14 ) |
Dell XPS 710
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6700 (2.66 GHz)
2GB DDR2-667MHz memory at 5-5-5-12
2x160GB 10K RPM Serial ATA (RAID 0) + 750GB additional hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 x 2 (Quad SLI)
16X SATA DVD-ROM
16X SATA DVD+/-RW
Creative X-Fi Card
Microsoft Windows MCE 2005 Update (Emerald)
McAfee (15-month)
Saitek Eclipse II Keyboard
Logitech G5 Laser Gaming Mouse
The nForce 680i testbed
Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX6700 (2.66 GHz)
EVGA nForce 680i motherboard
2GB DDR2-800MHz memory at 5-5-5-12
150GB Western Digital Raptor
NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 x 2 (Quad SLI)
16X IDE DVD-ROM
Onboard audio
Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
Benchmarks
LAME MT MP3 Encoding (MS Compiler)
Windows Media Encoder 9
3DMark06
F.E.A.R. 1.08
Quake 4 1.2
Company of Heroes 1.3
Half-Life 2 Lost Coast
Cinebench 9.5
Notes
We’re pairing our standard nForce 680i testbed against Dell’s XPS 710 system. This is basically the same system we tested NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX/GTS cards in last month, with the most notable change being the quad-core processor. One item we should also note is that we did ensure to use the same ForceWare 93.71 graphics drivers from NVIDIA.
| Media encoding and rendering | Page:: ( 7 / 14 ) |
Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9
LAME MT MP3 Encoding
Cinebench 9.5
Notes
Despite being saddled with slower 667MHz memory, the XPS 710 delivered solid performance in our media encoding and rendering benchmarks. The XPS 710 slightly outperformed our nForce 680i testbed in both MP3 encoding and our testing with Cinebench 9.5, while video conversion tests with WME9 were just two seconds slower than the nForce 680i system.
Also, as you can see in the benchmarks, the XPS 710 overclocked to 3.2GHz delivers nice gains in performance.
| 3DMark 06 | Page:: ( 8 / 14 ) |
Futuremark 3DMark05
Notes
It’s basically a dead heat in 3DMark 06, as the nForce 680i testbed and the XPS 710 finish within 1% of each other in 3DMark 06.
| F.E.A.R. | Page:: ( 9 / 14 ) |
F.E.A.R.
Notes
For our game performance testing, we’re going to test under two scenarios: low resolution (800x600), where CPU/memory performance is crucial to performance, the and high resolutions gamers are more likely to game it, where the GPU plays a dominant role in performance.
At 800x600 in F.E.A.R. the XPS 710’s slower 667MHz memory causes it to fall behind the nForce 680i testbed we built. Fortunately though, F.E.A.R. is such a graphically intense game that it’s only behind by 5%. At 1600x1200 with SLI8X AA turned on and 16x anisotropic filtering, the dual GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics cards are the limiting factor and thus CPU/memory isn’t as important. We could probably slap a dual-core core 2 Duo E6400 and get the same frame rate under these conditions.
| Quake 4 | Page:: ( 10 / 14 ) |
Quake 4
Notes
Our testing with Quake 4 is similar to the trends we noticed with F.E.A.R. only the performance margin separating the XPS 710 from the nForce 680i testbed are much greater. We see at 10% gap at 800x600. Once again we’re GPU-bound at 16x12 though.
| HL2 Lost Coast | Page:: ( 11 / 14 ) |
Lost Coast
Notes
Valve’s Half-Life 2 Lost Coast pushes the GPU subsystem a little harder than Quake, but not as much as F.E.A.R. and therefore the XPS 710 finishes 9% behind the nForce 680i system at 800x600.
| Company of Heroes | Page:: ( 12 / 14 ) |
Company of Heroes
Notes
CPU performance is a little more important in an RTS, and thus the gap separating the XPS 710 from the nForce 680i testbed opens up to 12%. Under high resolution testing though the performance of the various systems is the same, as we’re GPU-bound at 1600x1200 with 8xSLIAA.
| Ballistics Report | Page:: ( 13 / 14 ) |
Pros
Nice case: While we aren’t sold on the looks of Dell’s XPS 710 chassis, we certainly were impressed with the build quality of Dell’s new case. It’s built from solid aluminum and isn’t as prone to scratching as many of the aluminum cases we’ve come across over the years, and obviously with openings at the front and rear of the case, airflow isn’t an issue.
Working inside Dell’s chassis is a dream. There’s plenty of room inside to work, so installing and removing components is a snap. Along those same lines, many of the system components -- including the case cover itself -- can be removed sans tools. With the exception of the CPU’s heatsink/fan unit, most of the critical system components can be moved with very little effort. Hard drives for instance are mounted up top in an easily accessible drive bay. The back of the drives point out and are easily accessible, so you don’t have to reach around at a funky angle to hook up the hard disk drive’s power and data cables.
Even components like the graphics and sounds cards can be snapped into place very easily.
Moving up front, Dell hides the optical and 3.5” drives behind drive bay doors, giving the front of the chassis a clean undisturbed look. And with front panel USB, Firewire, and audio connections (microphone and headphones), hooking external devices to the XPS 710 is easy. For added flair, Dell adorns the front and back of the case with LEDs that light up the front and back of the system. The LEDs can be programmed to shine in a variety of colors.
Again, in our opinion Dell’s new chassis fails in the styling department, but everywhere else this case scores a solid A+. In our opinion, Dell could make a lot of money with gamers if they sold an ATX version of this case directly to the public.
Low noise cooling: Despite the fact that the XPS 710 is equipped with multiple case, CPU, and graphics card fans, in operation, Dell’s XPS 710 ran virtually silent in our testing. Even when running under load with dual GeForce 7950 GX2 cards running in SLI mode, we were hard-pressed to hear the system. Only when we ran the system with the case cover off were we finally able to hear the system components.
Dell has simply done a remarkable job with the XPS 710’s cooling.
Overclocking: The XPS 710 is one of the first Dell systems to ship with BIOS options to overclock the CPU. Inside the XPS 710’s BIOS, Dell provides CPU multipliers of 11.0x and 12.0x. This provides end users access to speeds up to 3.2GHz with just a few keystrokes.
Keep in mind that Dell doesn’t guarantee these clock speeds, nor is overclocking supported by the Dell warranty, but considering the cooling Dell provides and the reputation the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 has established as a good overclocking CPU, we have no doubt that many XPS 710 owners shouldn’t have any problems pushing the limits of this CPU.
Awesome PSU: Dell outfitted our XPS 710 system with a 1-kilowatt power supply. The PSU Dell has implemented is quite robust, with four PCIe power connections, making this system ready for dual GeForce 8800 GTX cards. There’s ample power (950W) available on the 12V rails too.
Dell definitely did their homework when developing this component in particular.
Loaded with features: Dell offers a range of high-end features with the XPS 710. Not only is the system available with Intel’s fastest quad-core processor, the Core 2 Extreme QX6700, the XPS 710 can be outfitted with both SLI and CrossFire graphics configurations, as well as multiple hard disk drive options (with or without RAID); our system even shipped with SATA-based optical drives!
Cons
DDR2-667MHz memory: With such exquisite attention to detail for the case, power supply, and cooling, it’s really a letdown to see the generic Nanya DDR2-667 memory Dell uses on the XPS 710. Obviously Dell spent a lot of time on R&D for the aforementioned components, but spent no time or effort in researching the system’s memory. At the very least Dell could’ve used DDR2-800 modules rather than 667MHz memory. Lower timings than 5-5-5-12 would’ve been nice too.
The bottom line is that Dell really should’ve partnered with an enthusiast memory manufacturer for the XPS 710. After all, this is supposed to be Dell’s flagship gaming system. Furthering adding insult to injury is the fact that even if you do take it upon yourself to correct this, and install, say high-end SLI-ready DDR modules from Corsair or OCZ, the XPS 710 won’t recognize the lower timings these modules are capable of running at, opting instead to stick with the stock (slower) memory settings. Dell could easily fix this if they’d just provide memory tuning options in the XPS 710’s BIOS.
nForce 590 chipset: NVIDIA’s nForce 590 chipset has already been replaced by the newer nForce 680i chipset. nForce 680i supports all of the same key features found in nForce 590, only it’s a little faster, and more importantly, is already built to support FSB speeds of up to 1333MHz. This is without a doubt, the Core 2 chipset of choice right now. In addition, Dell’s implementation of nForce 590 SLI is slightly cut down, lacking support for NVIDIA features such as SLI-Ready memory, DualNet, and RAID 0+1.
Upgrade potential: Since the XPS 710 is built around the BTX form factor, your upgrade potential down the road will always be limited, as BTX just hasn’t taken off in the aftermarket space. Other than OEMs like Dell, no one else is really using it. That means you may have a hard time finding BTX-compliant components like power supplies, motherboards, and cases when it comes time to upgrade.
| Final Verdict | Page:: ( 14 / 14 ) |