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| Introduction and Specifications | ||||||||
If you've followed the tech sector for any appreciable amount of time, you've no doubt heard the tale of Dell Inc. - one of those stories where a guy with a dream founded a company and eventually built it into a corporate giant. Right from the beginning, Michael Dell believed that the future of PC sales involve building and selling customized IBM PC-compatible computers directly to home users. The first computer of their own design, labeled the "Turbo PC" helped the company gross more than 73 million dollars in its first year alone. And by the turn of the century, Dell would become the largest seller of personal computers, with sales reported to be close to $25 billion dollars.
The past couple of years we have seen Dell's focus on gaming desktops with their XPS series sharpen, and today will see their latest offering, the more affordable XPS 630. Dubbed the "new challenger", the 630 is the beginning of a refresh of the XPS line, with updated specs and component choices. Available in black or red, the Dell XPS 630 is a customizable machine with support for dual graphics cards and the latest processors, and if we may say so, looks that kill.
Available in black or red
Our evaluation system came stocked with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT and 2GB of Samung DDR2-667 memory. Although the base unit ships with an Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 processor, we opted to test the XPS 630 with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 running at 2.4GHz. For added benefit, we also took Dell up on an offer to test not only some faster RAM in the form of Hynix DDR2-800 sticks, but also doubling up the number of GPUs by throwing in an extra 8800GT in SLI. The keyboard, mouse, and mousepad look capable enough for most users, although the mouse is a simple two-button scrollwheel variety. As with everything else, these two component can be exchanged for higher-end peripherals such as Razer's Tarantula Gaming Keyboard or a Microsoft Sidewinder USB Laser Mouse, for an additional cost. The choice is yours. |
| Dell XPS 630 - Exterior Shots |
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| Dell XPS 630 - Interior Design |
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In terms of drive installation, three 5 1/4" bays are placed at the top, with two of them already populated by the LG 16x DVD Burner and multi-card reader leaving only the middle bay open. At the bottom is a plastic cage able to hold four hard drives (although Dell states they will only factory-install up to three of them). The cages use a rail-based system and point outwards making for very easy installation, wiring, and access of the drives. In between the two areas is a no-man's land, where one of the two 80mm fans resides - the other sits in front of the hard drive cage. Dell has to watch the organization a bit here, so that the cables don't interfere with the incoming airflow. |
| PCMark Vantage | ||||
For our first round of benchmarks, we ran all of the modules built into Futuremark's PCMark Vantage test suite which was updated using the November 2007 Hotfix. Vantage is a new Windows Vista-only benchmarking tool that we've incorporated into our arsenal of tests here at HotHardware. Here's how Futuremark positions their new benchmarking tool:
The highest set of scores belong to the XPS 630 using lower latency RAM - note how the score drops when using DDR2-800 Hynix DIMMs that although faster than the Samsung DDR2-667 have the highest latency of the bunch, at 6-6-6-18. Using any set of memory, the XPS 630 with its Core 2 Quad CPU outpace our Core 2 Duo based reference system by close to 20%. "Our memories are often kept in digital form. Here, large digital photos in HD Photo format are stretched, flipped and rotated using the CPU. Plenty of system memory is highly beneficial for manipulating large images. Importing digital photos to Windows Photo Gallery is where a high performance HDD shines. More and more image manipulation is being done using the GPU, enabling instantaneous color correction, sharpening and softening of images. Home video editing with Windows Movie Maker can be very time-consuming – unless you have a high performance HDD. Home videos recorded on digital video cameras are sometimes transcoded and transferred to a portable media player. High definition videos are often archived in media servers. It may, however, be handy to have them transcoded and transferred to a portable media player. A fast CPU with many cores can handle transcoding swiftly." - Futuremark Memories 1 - Two simultaneous threads, CPU image manipulation and HDD picture import
In Memories, the scores get bounced around a bit, with the top score going to the XPS 630 when configured using the lowest clocked memory in the bunch. The reference system isn't completely blown away in this round, coming much closer to the score of the Dell using the CAS 6 rated Hynix memory than we had expected. "High definition TV broadcasts and movies have arrived. Playing an HD DVD with additional HD content, a Blu-ray movie, or watching HDTV smoothly (while making a backup of an HD DVD by transcoding to a media server or transcoding from a media server archive to a portable media player) requires lots of computing and graphical power. Windows Media Center with a high performance HDD can handle simultaneous video recording, time-shifting, and streaming to an Extender for Windows Media Center, such as Xbox 360™." TV and Movies 1 - Two simultaneous threads, Video transcoding: HD DVD to media server archive, Video playback: HD DVD w/ additional lower bitrate HD content from HDD, as downloaded from the net
Vantage's TV and Movies test returns the Corsair Dominator equipped version of the XPS 630 back to the forefront, outrunning the other installed DIMMs by anywhere from 150-200 PCMarks. Similar to the overall Vantage score, no matter how you configure the memory in the XPS 630, it's performing well.
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| PCMark Vantage (continued) | ||||
We continue our test coverage with the remaining modules from the comprehensive PCMark Vantage suite of benchmarks. Unlike the majority of our benchmarks, Vantage takes nearly and hour and a half to complete its round of tests, hitting upon all facets of hardware and drivers to come up with its results.
Courtesy, Futuremark: "Gaming is one of the most popular forms of entertainment for all ages. Today’s games demand high performance graphics cards and CPUs to avoid delays and sluggish performance while playing. Loading screens in games are yesterday’s news. Streaming data from an HDD in games – such as Alan Wake™ – allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action. CPUs with many cores give a performance advantage to gamers in real-time strategy and massively multiplayer games. Gaming Suite includes the following tests: " Gaming 1 - GPU game test
Gaming seems to exploit the memory differences the most, as the benchmarks are much more favorable to the faster RAM, but then sorted by latencies. In fact, our reference system which is using the same 2GB of CAS4 rated Corsair Dominator memory we used in one of the XPS 630 runs completed this suite of tests only right behind the Dell system when using the slower Samsung RAM. "Online music shops have changed the way we purchase music, letting us buy exactly the tracks we want, right from home. Cataloguing your music library is a breeze for fast and powerful HDDs. The most common audio file formats decrease your music’s audio quality which is undesirable. Luckily, lossless audio file formats are becoming more popular. Transcoding from non-compressed audio to a lossless format is heavily taxing on the CPU. Transcoding your audio files from one format to another is much quicker and easier using high performance CPUs." Vantage Music suite includes the following tests:
Music 1 - Three simultaneous threads, Web page rendering – w/ music shop content, Audio transcoding: WAV -> WMA lossless, HDD: Adding music to Windows Media Player
Similar to the Vantage TV/Movies results, surprisingly, the best score comes when using the slowest pair of DIMMs. The next best score comes from the more expensive DDR2-800 at CAS4, and then onto DDR2-800 at 6-6-6-18 timings. This last setup just barely holds off the reference system. "To compress and encrypt all personal information is vital for safe computing. Emails are the most important type of communication, whether it is personal or business. To keep the workflow smooth and enjoyable, high performance CPUs and HDDs are recommended. Reading news online while having your cup of coffee is quality-time. Often one site isn’t enough, so tabbed browsing is a perfect solution for news-hungry people. Spyware is very common on systems without protection against it, letting Windows Defender scan & protect your system is recommended. Voice over IP – with Skype™ or Windows Live Messenger – is very popular these days. Encrypted messaging for home and workplace gives additional security." Communications 1 - Three simultaneous threads, Data encryption: CNG AES CBC, Data compression, Web page rendering: graphics content, 1024x768, windowed
Vantage's Communications Suite puts all three configurations at roughly the same level, with a maximum of 66 PCMarks separating the best performance of the Dell XPS 630 from the least. Web surfing appears to be about 10 percent quicker on the XPS then on our reference system. "Starting various applications can take a long time – unless you have a high performance HDD. Editing text with WordPad is a breeze when done with fast CPUs and graphics cards. Often one site isn’t enough, so tabbed browsing is a perfect solution for highly productive people. Spyware is very common on systems without protection against it, letting Windows Defender scan & protect your system is recommended. Starting Windows Vista is a rather demanding task for the storage device, but a fast HDD will notably decrease the loading time. Our busy lives find us hard at work, balancing multiple tasks; with little time for breaks. It’s the same for our computers. Multiple tasks, running simultaneously, put your system under a lot of stress. Having a modern, up-to-date CPU, HDD, graphics card and board full of system memory increases your computer’s productivity and reduces your stress." Productivity 1 - Two simultaneous threads, Text editing, HDD: application loading
As far as Productivity goes, it's close to a dead heat. All four setups gave us similar results, with the reference system sneaking in and grabbing the third spot overall. While it does make sense to configure the Dell with DDR2-800, it just doesn't make sense to include the low-latency DIMMs according to this test. |
| Image Rendering Tests | ||||||||
POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit 3D graphics artwork. We tested with POV-Ray's standard included benchmarking model on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each. Results are measured in pixels-per-second (PPS)throughput.
This benchmark has options for testing a single CPU, or All CPUs, of which we chose the latter to show the benefits of a Dual or Quad Core processor. As the Core 2 Quad has double the number of cores than our Core 2 Duo, we would expect that the rendering output would also be double and that's almost exactly what we got.
Cinebench R10 is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D. Cinema 4D from Maxon is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by 3D animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and is an excellent gauge of pure computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below, listed in seconds.
By the same token, Cinebench R10 can put all cores to use when rendering its own images, and we expected the same results that we received with POV-Ray. The single CPU tests were very close, with the 2.4 GHz Q6600 just slipping by the 2.33GHz E6550. Multi-threaded testing didn't exactly double the score for the XPS 630, but it was close enough.
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| 3DMark06 and LAME MT MP3 Encoding | ||||||||
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3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are processed with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance. Calculations that are normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the CPU for processing and rendering. The frame-rate generated in each test is used to determine the final score.
Dell's XPS 630 smoked our zero-point system in 3DMark06 - at least when CPU performance is the sole factor. Had the graphics card factored into the equation, the numbers would have been a bit more balanced.
LAME MT is an open-source mid to high bit-rate and VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications. In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file and converted it to the MP3 format using this multi-thread capable application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Here, shorter times equate to better performance.
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| Low-Res Gaming Framerates | ||||
For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with the Crysis SP demo and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When testing processors with Crysis or ET:QW, we drop the resolution to 800x600, and reduced all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.
Although you may think CPU performance should be the main factor in these low-res gaming benchmarks, we found that Crysis testing still favored our dual-core reference system. The closest the XPS 630 could get was 6 frames behind, when using the CAS4 rated DDR2-800. Frame rates slipped a bit as the CAS ratings rose. ETQW was the opposite, with the reference system falling to the rear. Here, CAS latencies seemingly did not have such an adverse effect on the frame rates, with the XPS 630 equipped with the lower rated DDR2-800 outrunning it when using DDR2-667. |
| High-Res Gaming and SLI Testing | ||||
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We now move onto some higher-end testing, to see how the Dell XPS 630 performs when running games under more realistic conditions. Each game was set to 1600x1200 with all graphics settings set to High. We ran the same benchmark with four configurations; once each with the varying sets of memory that the XPS 630 can be configured with, and then a fourth time with a duo of 8800 GTs connected in SLI, another upsell for this rig.
Oddly, the DDR2-667 numbers were tops for both the DirectX-based Crysis and the OpenGL Quake Wars. In both cases, however, that difference was less than half a frame per second. When equipped with the high latency DDR2-800, performance takes a dip with a 13% dropoff in Crysis alone. SLI numbers were encouraging, increasing frame rates by a third in the Crysis demo, and over 41% in ETQW. With the relatively cheap price of the 8800GT, adding in a second card is almost a no-brainer if gaming is a priority. |
| Performance Summary and Wrap-Up | ||||
Performance Summary: Just to set things in the proper perspective here, the zero-point system we used in our benchmarks should not be seen as true competition. Differences between chipset, and more primarily the CPU and GPU really make these two systems different entities. In that vein, the numbers we presented should help you decide what is the best setup for you and your wallet. For the better part of testing, the XPS 630 paired with Corsair Dominator RAM gave us the best performance. However, the numbers typically weren't too much greater than those of the Samsung DDR2-667, although the price difference could cost you an additional $200. On the other side of the fence, SLI will also drive costs up but the increased performance may well be worth it for hardcore gamers.
We'd have to say that Dell has done a fine job with the XPS 630. From the brushed aluminum exterior with lighted front panel to the completely customizable interior specs, there's plenty here to like. There's a few minor annoyances - doors not closing properly and some messy wiring - but overall the unit performed well and exceeded our expectations in the overclocking department. We're not too keen on using the older 650i chipset as the basis, and the inclusion of relatively low-clocked RAM modules seems to be step backward, but keep in mind this isn't Dell's flagship XPS.
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