Cerberus guild

by **Saudonan** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:24 am

Not into building my own but been happy with my current Dell PC and was thinking of upgrading to this:

Intel® Viiv™ Core™ 2 Duo E6400 Processor (2.13GHz, 1066MHz, 2MB)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium - English
Dell™ 20" Black Wide Flat Panel (E207WFP) - UK/Irish
2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 667MHz [2x1024] Memory
320GB Serial ATA RAID 0 Stripe [2x160GB 7200rpm drives with DataBurst™ cache]
16X DVD+/-RW Drive
256MB nVidia® GeForce® 7900GS graphics card
Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability
Internal 13-in-1 Media Card Reader
Integrated Analogue TV tuner PCI card and Dell™ (MCE/Premium/Ultimate) remote control

Total Cost £804.97 including VAT and Delivery

Any good?

by **Kid** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:14 pm

Not bad. Just 3 problems really.

1. Integrated Audio. Not good since the CPU is being used to provide some of the audio output. Quality will not be as good as a dedicated sound card. Not a big issue unless you have a good ear for sound.

2. The GeForce® 7900GS is a mid range card. Nothing special about it. Here is some info about it:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/14/th ... -range_uk/
Check page 4 for some easy to read performance graphs.

3. It's a Dell. They are evil. They lie about monitor sizes, they make it near impossible to upgrade their pc's, and their support is less appealing that fried worms. I've seem more competent staff at Burger King and I really really really don't like Burger King staff.

Try get a better graphics card in there, and you've got a pretty good PC, even if it is a Dell.

by **Saudonan** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:38 pm

Not too worried about the sound - just putting some cheap speakers on for now. And I know I could get an even better graphics card but I have to draw the line somewhere. This looks pretty good for the price.

Agree about upgrading though. It was a nightmare getting an nvidia card into my current Dell - 2 days of fiddling with the bios and even now my machine thinks it has 3 monitors (with the first two disabled). Overall though the machine has been very relieable and I haven't had to contact customer support once.

by **Psymonator** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:46 am

well kid i suppose Dell is based in Ireland

by **Smacdevil** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:39 am

Very nice rig, Saud

I think I'd go for the 6600 CPU instead, as it seems to be the one with best performance that's not insanely priced atm, but there's probably not any noticable difference between that and the 6400.

Integrated sound cards *can* be a problem, but not necessarily. I'm sure 99% of PC buyers are quite satisfied with theirs, but I got to agree that a dedicated audio device would probably give better sound quality. Depends on if you're a HiFi freak, hobby-musician or a regular gamer I guess :mrgreen:

by **Kid** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 4:19 am

Psymonator wrote:well kid i suppose Dell is based in Ireland

Yup. They even offered me 2 jobs that I didn't even apply for! Thankfully I had the good sense to turn them down.

by **Saudonan** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:19 am

Edit - I've ordered it but upgraded sound as suggested to :

Sound Blaster® X-Fi Xtreme Music PCI Soundcard
Dell™ A525 Speakers with Subwoofer

should be with me in 10 days :-)

by **Murderall** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:50 am

I have heard that Dell can be a proper pain to upgrade but I've had my Gen5 XPS for about 2 years now and I must say it has never let me down. Only had to upgrade graphics card once and it went in sweet.

I had never touched a prebuilt before this one as I prefered to build my own but when this one was offered to me for £400 when the CPU alone was costing £600 quid I thought it was too good an offer to refuse. Not even any scratches from when it hit the ground

The set up looks pretty cool Saud, tho kid is probably right about the monitor, Dell quite often find an extra inch of screen size from somewhere :wink:

by **Kid** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 9:10 am

The 19 inch monitor I bought from Dell for my Mum was only 16.3 inches (viewable area) when I measured it. Dell measured the full diagonal width of the monitor, including the border around the actual viewable area.

I complained to our advertising standard authority and they agreed it was false advertising, but couldn't do anything since they have no power over websites.

by **DoctorLeo** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:04 pm

My computer is 4 years old. imagine how jealous I am!!!

by **Saudonan** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:47 am

phew. should be back on soon., spent hours trying to fix the internet connection and finally found my dns settings were at fault.

definitely looks cool so far :-)

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