Dell XPS 410 vs Dimension 9200

**Charlton** · 26-08-2010

Many think that Dell XPS 410 & Dimension 9200 are one the same system with similar system configuration. But there is a bit difference. First the difference is RAID and CPU family. The Dell Dimension 9200 has Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz CPU, 4GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS graphics card and Windows Vista support. This is the basic configuration. While the Dell XPS 410 comes with Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz) processor versus the Pentium D 960 Processor, Genuine Windows XP Professional SP2 OS, Dual Channel DDR2 667 2x 512 MB memory, NV 7900 GTX graphics card and 2x 250GB1 HD Raid 0.

There is quiet a difference between both the desktop and before buying anyone of the same you must go through the detailed specification. I had explained in more detailed below about the two systems with the operating system support. Dell is always evaluating ambiguous. The cooling is usually very well thought out, the coolers are huge and are always designed so that the air is blown directly out of the housing. This is best suitable for Dell Dimension.

Windows Vista opens new horizons for mobile PCs. The first representatives of desktop PCs with Windows Vista does not show that much of a difference in performance compared with its competitors on the basis of XP. However, laptops with Vista installed appear in a completely different form. And in general is to say that Windows Vista will have a more serious impact on the world of mobile computers than on the world of desktop computers.

The advantages of hybrid drives. With hybrid hard drives will run applications much faster, because Windows Vista will get access to required information, located in flash memory rather than on a rotating disk. In addition, the more you rotate pancakes hard drive in the laptop, the more depleted battery. Accordingly, the use of hybrid drives, which should reduce overall power consumption laptop. And theoretically, in connection with a decrease in the number of records on disk should increase the reliability of the hard disk. It is recommended to have Vista supports on such Dell systems.

**Charlton** · 26-08-2010

Dell Dimension 9200 :

Specification :

Intel Core 2 Duo ViivTM TechnologieTM E6400 Processor (2.40GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (OEM3)
2048MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
640 GB SATA HDD Raid 0
Broadcom 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network
256MB PCIe x16 nVidia 7900GS GeForceTM
Integrated SoundBlaster Software
16x DVD + /-RW, 16x DVD, 13-in-1 card reader

With almost 15 kilograms of Dell's almost a lightweight among the complete computers, even the housing holds much in the frame. On design, it is nothing to complain, the combination of black, silver metallic and the white side walls is very chic look. By logos and engravings on the sides and the front of the PC is clearly identified as a Dell. At the top clearly legible, the model name. As usual these days in complete systems, besides the optical drives still a lot of additional ports on the front of the device. Such a card reader for all popular formats was used, there are also two USB, one microphone and a headphone jack.

Dell has the computer next to the DVD burner yet donated a DVD-ROM, so it is not used except for a 3.5" opening the entire front is full. Said optical drives are a little offset to the inside, which is especially the eject button of the upper drive makes a little hard felt. Already know the back suggests that it must act on some of the components used to custom products. Shall first fall connectivity on the motherboard, what are the next LAN and USB connectors only some sound connections. On PS / 2, Firewire or a parallel port is omitted completely, but at least you get six USB ports. Continue to fall on the vertical power connectors.

Much more serious, however, the absence of a power button is on the power supply. Who wants to run his PC is energy conscious, therefore a switchable power strip is a must. As soon as you pocketed the power cord, howling for a few seconds, the fan on, then the PC remains but to press the power button on the front of. During the test, took his leave abruptly, surprisingly twice the backup when plugging the power cord. Besides mandatory things like cable and DVI adapter you can find a remote control along with USB infrared receiver and a multimedia keyboard inc palm rest and an optical mouse. The CDs containing the preinstalled operating system and driver software or applications, they will be so only in case of new installation required.

Very easy to also designed the operation of the TV card, which we tested just over a DVB-T connection and the Media Center: After a few minutes of easy installation and tuning, we could easily watch TV on your monitor and record. Also additional features such as a digital television magazine and Time-Shift smoothly. The computer is 100% Free Legacy. Meaning: Internal: 6x SATA. Ext: 8x USB. Otherwise, NOTHING! Nothing with Firewire, serial, parallel, IDE etc. Housing, board and cooling solution is proprietary and cannot be definitely replaced by other hardware. Thus, for example, the base of the processor rotated 45 ° and the mounting holes for the radiator not correspond to standard, which prohibits third-party heatsink. The BIOS does not allow any interference in RAM or processor clock speed! remains on the 6400er Core2Duo 2.13 GHz.

The proprietary 380W power supply is pretty much tailored to the computer. With my additional hardware, it went without problems, but an 8800 GTX would be definitely not possible. I am really very satisfied with the computer. The computer is his money worth! But a man must always look for in Dell on special offers and should be very cautious in terms of extras. Either fits the configuration or you are pulled over the table . The operating system used in current orders Vista, our test system was still shipped with Windows XP Media Center Edition and is thus also optimally comparable with the previous Windows XP systems.

All cables were installed cleanly, which is on the one hand not to the presence of IDE cables (both optical drives are SATA devices), on the other hand, Dell makes it a little easier with custom-made components. For example, the power supply has an additional cable outlet at the bottom, which leads directly to the motherboard connection. In many places has also worked with cable ties, also attached to various components cable channels. As for the noise, you have to make compromises in this system, however: the built-stock cooler nVidia graphics card makes itself known through a very ugly, loud howling and unfortunately by far not only in the pure 3D mode.

Even during normal work on the desktop, the fan jumped up again and again, perhaps because it lies directly on the TV card does not attract the best air. In second place in terms of noise is the RAID-0 group, since the disks were not decoupled. transferred Worse still, by the loose on the plastic rails and the vibration-prone, side walls of the housing, the access noise levels on the computer. It should definitely be considered when purchasing a decoupled state, e.g. on soft carpet or foam materials. Power supply, CPU and case ventilation are quite low.

**Charlton** · 26-08-2010

Dell XPS 410 :

Specification :

Home workstation
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 - E6700.
Memory: up to 4GB Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz, 4 slots.
Up to 1TB of disk space, hard drives Serial ATA.
Supports: Dell Data Safe and RAID 0.
DVDRW drive.
3.5" Floppy Drive and 13-in-1 Media Reader.
256MB PCI Express NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE Turbo Cache.
256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro / 256MB nVidia GeForce 7900 GS.
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic (Dolby 5.1).
Physics Accelerator: AGEIA PhysX.
DVI, VGA and S-Video / Optional: IEEE 1394 / 9 ports USB2.0 / Integrated Gigabit Ethernet adapter.
375Vt power supply.
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium / Home Basic.

The Dell XPS 410 is factory equipped with 512MB memory that can be removed. Overall, the Dell XPS 410 upgradeable to 4GB of RAM. In part, the information from the manufacturers to the maximum memory upgrade outdated and may differ from ours. With our memory modules, the specified total capacity will be reached in any case. For the RAM upgrade to the device 4 (2x2) slots are available.

If you plan to buy a computer, in any case it will be equipped with Windows Vista, whether you like it or not. Of the four tested computers from different manufacturers, each manufacturer to integrate Windows Vista elected its approach. Immediately after the release of the new OS Dell and Gateway have switched exclusively to Vista, both in desktop and in mobile computers. These companies continue to sell computers installed with Windows XP, but only through their own units. Meanwhile, CyberPower and Shuttle continue to offer XP as an option to their systems. If you are planning to buy Dell XPS desktop with Vista support then better go for Dell XPS 710.

But despite the potential problems with drivers, Alienware still plans to offer Windows Vista together with its desktop and notebook solutions, true for the installation will be available only to Vista Home Premium. However, the company saved a line of workstations with XP installed for those customers who have not resolved the issue of migration to the new OS and the fear that some of their enterprise applications simply will not work in Windows Vista. Drivers have always been a serious issue for the owners of computers, because in fact the driver - a means of communication operating system and any hardware device.

All drivers should have been rewritten for Windows Vista, but not all developers have done their job to the release of the OS, but many of the older peripherals in general unlikely to be given a second life. No Vista-drivers for some peripherals could be a decisive against Windows Vista. For example, in the course of our beta testing drivers for graphics cards proved to be not the best light and we have seen that many games run much slower than in Windows XP. Dell XPS 710 with XP installed demonstrated the significance of 143 fps in the game Far Cry at 1024 x 768. The same computer with Windows Vista installed at the same settings, the result showed only 108 fps, which is 24% slower than the result of XP-system.

The best result in the orderly Gateway FX530XT, which was the fastest in all tests. However, the ATI card cannot start the game Doom 3. Flagship Gateway is equipped with the overclocked quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (standard 2.66GGts, overclocked to 3.2GGts). FX530XT completed the stage with Photoshop for 295 seconds, while the next on the speed Dell XPS 710 it took 360 seconds, which is 22% slower result of Gateway. The system has been tested for multi-tasking - video encoding with the opening of multiple windows web browser. But the speed FX530XT due not so much a processor, 4GB of fast memory as DDR2. It should be said that such an amount four times the standard amount of RAM, which manufacturers supply with their desktop.

Dell XPS 710 - the second performance of the computer loses the winner of the order of 10-20% in all tests. It is slightly cheaper than the creation of Gateway, and his voluminous corpus provides space for the imagination than the body FX530XT. Computer noticeably less noisy: in the case can be easily deployed large and less noisy coolers to remove heat from the hot components such as CPU and GeForce 7950 GX2. The second computer from Dell - XPS 410 which comes at a relatively good price / performance ratio: compiled based on dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, the computer is Photoshop-test rather quickly - for 387 seconds, finishing third out of six. And 291 seconds in a test for multi-tasking slightly lower than that of more expensive models.

Despite the fact that previous tests showed that adding RAM to a computer almost always improves performance, CyberPower Gamer Infinity 7500 has proved that it is not only in memory: Core 2 Duo E6600 and 1GB of system memory the computer was much faster than its counterpart Dell C521, which has in the arsenal of 2GB of memory and processor AMD 2.4-GHz Athlon 64 X2 4600 +. And despite their belonging to the price range up to $ 1000, Gamer Infinity 7500 slightly slower than a very expensive Dell XPS 710, and then a couple of tests.

**Charlton** · 26-08-2010

Conclusion :

As stated above, a first-generation Vista PC is missing some components that negotiate some of the advantages of the new Windows Vista. For example, they do not have hybrid hard drive technology ReadyDrive, which reduces disk access times. It is said that the first should appear notebooks with hybrid drives, but it will not happen before mid-year. In addition, our subjects were no additional screens SideShow, which can display some useful information without loading the OS. Such screens can be embedded in peripherals, such as a keyboard or remote control and even directly into the computer.

In terms of devices used our systems are not much different from the normal XP-systems, which could be seen in recent months, and as mentioned above, there is nothing that was originally created under Windows Vista. For comparison, among the first harbingers of laptops for Windows Vista is. Dell C521 has demonstrated the lowest performance in the group. This system is lost in all tests, except for Far Cry. To complete the test Photoshop system required 597 seconds long, that almost two times longer than the required top-end system from Gateway. C521 was slow and the test for multi-tasking, which took 359 seconds, whereas the XPS 710 managed for 258 seconds, which is 28% faster. Even in comparison with a similar system, for example CyberPower, this PC from Dell was too slow, because at the end of our Photoshop-test, it took him 148 seconds more.

Dell PCs target it’s very clear to more hardware-inexperienced clients, which strikes many points (BIOS, expansion, ports). To this must be taken into account in the assessment, because for these customers a stable operation plays a greater role than e.g. Overclocking features. In this area, the Dimension 9200: The system was permanently stable, is ready for immediate use and offers a reasonably good hardware computing and gaming performance. Nor could shine with the mouse, keyboard and extensive range of accessories, as well as the smooth DVB-T operation.