XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

keith — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:19:43 GMT

is it possible to buy a h2c liquid cooler for my 710xps

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

combray — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:32:42 GMT

Three more days people! I dont know how long till we actually get the board though :(

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Tekhed — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:07:28 GMT

@ J. Paunicka

Also, sorry to hear about your unfortunate timing. I actually did take advantage of an employee purchase plan, so I ended up under $5k (shipped). Of course that's without Blue Ray or a monitor (had my own). I didn't know about the purchase plan when I bought my 710 H2C, so oddly enough my 720 H2C was cheaper than the 710.

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Tekhed — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:01:55 GMT

@ J. Paunicka

Undoubtedly the price for this system will go down. I was impatient and after 3-weeks of not flying I was ready for my new computer.

Honestly, this system is great. It’s what I thought I was getting from the 710 H2C. Due to life in the “real world” I was finally able to use the system starting this last Saturday, and have flown a few missions well over 3 hours long with all terrain settings on max. I could’ve cranked up AI as well but then it begins to get a little unrealistic, so I put Airlines on 80% and small aircraft on 50%. Regardless of your choice, it will run smooth.

The only thing I found is that I had to perform a couple strange setting changes for FSX. For example, if you go in the bios and unselect “multi-core”, over clock to 3.76, the game runs perfect. Also, you can’t take advantage of SLI, for whatever reason FSX runs excruciatingly slow…operating on a single GPU creates the optimum environment. Attempting to operate on all 4 cores can cause the game to reset the whole system. Not really sure why this happens.

Oddly, even with these setting changes FPS will often jump to 50 FPS and average in the 30’s. In all, FSX is smooth (even with my TrackIR 4) and I have never experienced any blurries or jumpy frames.

While I NOW enjoy FSX with nothing to complain about, I think it’s obvious that the development team has a lot of inefficient code to work through. To say that a system similar to the 720 H2C is the minimum setup is a little scary to consider. I suppose all this will be a moot point in about 8 months as new chip sets hit the market this fall and prices drop for what we now consider to be “great”.

Hope this helped.

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

J. Paunicka — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 06:32:16 GMT

@ Tekhed

I read your post one day too late! Looking at your earlier post, I too am looking for for a new system primarily to run FSX (also, the Blu-ray capability doesn't hurt either). The company I work for had a deal going where I could get 21% off a Dell system, which unfortnatlye expired last night. So for over a day I pondered whether it was worth still dropping $5000 on a new system for a this game, unsure of how well it would handle FSX. Apparently according to your post, it handles it quite well. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince myself it was justified, especially with DX10 for FSX still in work. Had I known this 24 hours sooner, I'd be counting down the days until the new system arrived on my doorstep instead of the days until either the next discount comes along or the price on the system drops.

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Tekhed — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:30:55 GMT

Hi, earlier in the forum I was discussing my problems with the XPS 710 H2C and its inability to perform in regards to Microsoft’s new flight sim FSX. In the weeks that have past, I sent the system back and purchased the XPS 720 H2C.

My new system came equipped with the QX6800 and 4 gig of dominator memory. This new system with the 680i motherboard is a world apart from the XPS 710 H2C. Of course I had to test FSX on the new system as this would be the deciding factor whether or not I would keep it. It is well worth the money.

As some may know, FSX is worthless if you can’t turn the settings on max. On anything less than maximum the level of realism dips below anything which may convince you of an authentic flight experience. With the 720 H2C all my settings are maxed out…on top of that I’m also using TrakerIR, so the load on the game’s autogen is intense.

The 720 H2C is well worth the money.

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Jeff Dowdy — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 02:26:51 GMT

Hi. I just got off the phone with multiple Dell reps with the same problem another user mentioned above. Getting a Dell preferred account which can only initially come with less than the cost of a720. Multiple reps told me there was no way to use the preferred with another credit card. Has anyone successfully talked to Dell in to some way around this?

Thanks.

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Tim Wrate — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:41:33 GMT

Lionel

can I order a system from the US site using your home address for shipping? Even after adding the sost of a flight to the US the 720 will be cheaper than the prices you are quoting in the UK and as ll says above I'll get more choice and an overcloscked system to boot!

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Mbentley — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:29:42 GMT

Lionel, when I check my MOB with a diag. program, it indicates a 570 board? I have an xps710 red purchased in May 2007 (sold as 590). Second, I realize the complaints from 700 buyers, but 710 buyers were also given bad info when buying their systems and these systems are not up to par as indicated. Am I expected to spend an additional 500.00 (just guessing on MOB upgrade price) to get the system I thought I was originally buying? Thank you

Mike (not so happy)

re: XPS 720 H2C is Here, Officially

Il — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:43:20 GMT

Doh. EU customers shafted again :-(
EU get less options, lower spec, more expensive.

I've been waiting for the 720, so I just specced up an XPS 720 H2C system on dell.co.uk, and noted these differences...

** Processor: No choice, no factory overclock
EU = QX6700 processor (8MB 2.66GHz)

US = X6800 (4MB,3.73GHz Factory overclocked)
US = QX6700 (8MB,3.46GHz Factory overclocked)
US = QX6800 (8MB L2 Cache,3.73GHz Factory overclocked)

** Operating System: EU version does not appear to include re-installation disk?

** Memory: Less choice, no overclock and check out the stupendous cost of the extra 2GB of memory!
EU = 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz [2x1024MB] Memory [Included in Price]
EU = 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz [4x1024MB] Memory [add £705.00 or £19/month1] (I've seen this for £250 online)

US = 2GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz OC'd to 1066MHz-2 DIMMs [Included in Price]
US = 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4 DIMMs [add $170 or $5/month1]
US = 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz OC'd to 1066MHz-4 DIMMs [add $600 or $18/month1]

** Additional Hard Drives: No choice - you must take the 500MB drive
EU = 500GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100

US = None
US = 160GB - Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM, SATA 1.5Gb/s, 16MB Cache [add $280 or $9/month1]
US = 320GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache [add $170 or $5/month1]
US = 500GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache [add $300 or $9/month1]
US = 750GB - Seagate 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache [add $370 or $11/month1]

** Optical Drive: No choice, no BluRay
EU = 16x DVD+/-RW & 16x DVD Drives [Included in Price]

US = Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable [Included in Price]
US = Single Drive: Blu-ray Disc Drive (BD/DVD/CD burner w/double layer BD write [add $310 or $9/month1]

** Graphics Cards: No choice
EU = DUAL 768MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800GTX graphics cards [Included in Price]

US = Dual 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX [Included in Price]
US = Dual 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra [add $700 or $21/month1]

** Keyboard & Mouse: Limited choice, no "none" or cheap option (I don't want another keyboard & mouse).
US = Many choices including none

** Media Card Readers: No "none" option - must take the 13 in 1 reader
EU = Internal 13-in-1 Media Card Reader
US = Has "none" option

** Price
EU = £3650
US = $5500 (£2800) - I could save even more money in the US by removing the extra hard drive that I don't want.

** Conclusion **
I'm used to paying higher prices for almost everything here in Europe, but I object to getting a significantly less powerful system with less choice to configure to my requirements.