Dell 6-Core Studio XPS 7100 Review

Name: Dell Studio XPS 7100
Brand: Dell

by Paul Lilly — Monday, July 05, 2010, 10:30 AM EDT

Unigine Heaven 2.0 & S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat

Page 7: Unigine Heaven 2.0 & S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat

Unigine Heaven v2.0 Benchmark

Synthetic DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine Heaven

The Unigine Heaven Benchmark v2.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark, when run in DX11 mode, also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion), and it also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering.

If you want to brutalize your system, run the unforgiving Unigine benchmark, and if you're a real masochist, crank the visual quality settings up while you're at it. That's exactly what we did, and it brought the Studio XPS 7100 to a crawl, even at 1680x1050. This isn't indicative of real-world performance, but perhaps what you can expect performance to be like a few years down the road, and even then on that rare title (like the original Crysis) that pushes the envelope.

S. T. A. L. K. E. R. - Call of Pripyat

DX11 Gaming Performance

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Call of Pripyat is the third game in the STALKER series and throws in DX11 to the mix. This benchmark is based on one of the locations found within the latest game. Testing includes four stages and utilizes various weather conditions, as well as different time of day settings. It offers a number of presets and options, including multiple versions of DirectX, resolutions, antialiasing, etc. We conducted our testing with DX11 enabled, various resolution settings, and different image quality levels.

Here we see the limits of a single GPU setup on a high end title with the visuals cranked up. Framerates teetered on the edge of playable, though bear in mind this is with the Ultra presets. Still, what's important to keep in mind here is that if you're a hardcore gamer, the Studio XPS 7100 doesn't offer a whole lot of upgrade options. You can slap a dual-GPU videocard in there, but you can't add a second HD 5870 for added pixel pushing muscle.