Any Core I7 users yet?

Jon McGuffin · December 6th, 2008, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alastair Brown

Have caved in. All this info was too much to resist.

Talked them down to £720 inc vat and deliv and an uprated dual DVI graphics card, 2 x 320Gb in RAID0 and 6Gb of RAM. And YES, that price does include a Blu Ray Burner and a 64 bit O/S, and a free Creative Video Camera(go for around £70 on Ebay). Going to run 1Tb storage drives via eSATA.

Review

HEXUS.net - Review :: Dell Studio XPS: Intel's Core i7 system for £699 : Page - 1/10

That's fantastic... Do tell when you receive it how it performs for you...

Jim Andrada · December 9th, 2008, 10:10 AM

Just ordered a water cooled Boxx i7 system with the 3.2 Ghz chip and 6 GB of memory. The water cooling should permit the chip to overclock significantly - I hope. I got it primarily for 3D rendering (Cinema 4D, Vray, Fry Render) but am confident it will also be a huge improvement for video.

I'll find out for sure about two weeks hence when the machine arrives for Xmas.

The thing that impressed me most about the chip was that it seems to offer (via overclocking) a big performance boost for single/double threaded apps that don't take advantage of high levels of multi threading.

In particular, I run the RealFlow fluid simulator and they only support two threads unless you pay a bunch extra for a license that opens up higher levels of multithreading.

I hope I can say goodbye to 24 hour renders of a single image. But in reality I'll probably just crank up the resolution or add more lighting effects and get better results for the same 24 hours.

Jeff Harper · December 9th, 2008, 10:48 AM

The boys at Boxx do not play around. Their configurations seem to be as good as it gets.

Jim Andrada · December 9th, 2008, 10:59 AM

Yes, they seem to know what they're doing. Pretty familiar with most of the 3D apps. I've talked with them at SIGGRAPH a couple of times and was favorably impressed. This will be my first Boxx system.

David Johns · December 9th, 2008, 12:24 PM

Hello,

I too have just ordered the Dell Studio XPS Core i7 - the base spec (2.66GHz chip, 6GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, Vista 64), £683 including VAT and delivery. Also ordered their 2904W monitor for £183 - 1920x1080 24" monitor, seemed too good a bargain to miss, will use Vegas' preview to second monitor for full-HD preview on that.

Alas, delivery date is only given as "by or before Jan 6th" and customer support tell me that they've been rather overwhelmed by the demand.

Upgrading from a single-core Pentium 4 2.5GHz, this is going to be one heck of a difference!

Regards
David Johns

Jeff Harper · December 9th, 2008, 12:39 PM

Going from a Pentium 4? Be careful, your head might explode after you see it in action. At the least you will have to pinch yourself.

Alastair Brown · December 9th, 2008, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Johns

Hello,

I too have just ordered the Dell Studio XPS Core i7 - the base spec (2.66GHz chip, 6GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, Vista 64), £683 including VAT and delivery. Also ordered their 2904W monitor for £183 - 1920x1080 24" monitor, seemed too good a bargain to miss, will use Vegas' preview to second monitor for full-HD preview on that.

Alas, delivery date is only given as "by or before Jan 6th" and customer support tell me that they've been rather overwhelmed by the demand.

Upgrading from a single-core Pentium 4 2.5GHz, this is going to be one heck of a difference!

Regards
David Johns

Hi David,

Hopefully we can compare happy notes!

Jonathan Gentry · December 12th, 2008, 11:27 AM

Guys

I'm not knocking the Dell. It will work great for you but building the system or buying a system with the Asus motherboard really is the way to go. You are leaving alot on the table if you don't overclock this chip. I'm at 3.6Ghz (3.8 ran fine but I backed it down just for good measure) on a 2.66 chip at only the cost of figuring how to overclock it in the bios. The machine will run at 100% utilization for as long as I like with no issues on the stock intel fan.

You may think this is going to blow things up but I've been running the Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0Ghz for a long long time with no adverse effects. This i7 chip is much better at overclocking than even the q6600.

Just wanted to throw that point out there.

Alastair Brown · December 12th, 2008, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Gentry

Guys

I'm not knocking the Dell. It will work great for you but building the system or buying a system with the Asus motherboard really is the way to go. You are leaving alot on the table if you don't overclock this chip. I'm at 3.6Ghz (3.8 ran fine but I backed it down just for good measure) on a 2.66 chip at only the cost of figuring how to overclock it in the bios. The machine will run at 100% utilization for as long as I like with no issues on the stock intel fan.

You may think this is going to blow things up but I've been running the Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0Ghz for a long long time with no adverse effects. This i7 chip is much better at overclocking than even the q6600.

Just wanted to throw that point out there.

Absolutely agree, however, you can't argue with the Dell price. With what you save, you could buy a clockable mobo and still have a LOT of change.

Terry Esslinger · December 12th, 2008, 01:49 PM

Does it cost hat much more to have one built?

Alastair Brown · December 12th, 2008, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry Esslinger

Does it cost hat much more to have one built?

I priced up the same spec as I am paying £720 for, and hit £1200 and thats without all the grief and time of building/configuring and installing drivers (once you find the 64 bit versions). The Dell deal was a no brainer in my book,

David Johns · December 12th, 2008, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jonathan Gentry

I'm not knocking the Dell. It will work great for you but building the system or buying a system with the Asus motherboard really is the way to go. You are leaving alot on the table if you don't overclock this chip.

You may think this is going to blow things up but I've been running the Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0Ghz for a long long time with no adverse effects. This i7 chip is much better at overclocking than even the q6600.

Of course, that's absolutely fine if you know what you're doing but I wouldn't have the first idea how to overclock anything and I'm not into building PCs from scratch. I'm sure I could do so but it would take so much of my time researching what to do as to make it an illogical decision when I can buy the Dell pre-built and tested in a matter of seconds.

Speaking of which - great excitement this evening as I note these magic words on the Dell order tracking page:

"Your order has been sent for delivery."

Woohoo! Roll on Monday!

Regards
Dave

Terry Esslinger · December 12th, 2008, 07:54 PM

Again, corrrect me if I am wrong, you would have to buy another MoBo and trade it out in the Dell system if you wanted to overclock it? Probably have to change the power supply and cooling also?? I am a total neophyte at computer building, although I've upgraded a few.

Jon McGuffin · December 12th, 2008, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry Esslinger

Again, corrrect me if I am wrong, you would have to buy another MoBo and trade it out in the Dell system if you wanted to overclock it? Probably have to change the power supply and cooling also?? I am a total neophyte at computer building, although I've upgraded a few.

Yes, I wouldn't try to overclock a dell system and I certainly wouldn't try to swap out critical components such as motherboard, etc, etc. Their systems are pretty well built and once you pull off the case, I think you'll agree that system modifications such as a mobo swap are risky and difficult. Why the need to overclock? You may be able to eek out a 5-15% speed improvement but at the potential cost of system stability and longevity.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against doing so, but if you are not exactly experienced with doing it, I think you are definately best leaving it alone. This frankly is analogus to modifying your car with new headers, exhaust, computer chips, etc, etc, etc.. Yes, it can work out, but in most cases, leaving the complete system alone the way the designer originally intended it has merit....

Jon

Jon McGuffin · December 12th, 2008, 11:28 PM

Oh, and let me add one more thing here.... And I'm speaking as somebody who HAS overclocked my systems in the past and have *always* built my pc's...

System overclockers mainly do so for sport... The time system overclockers GAIN with the performance increase will rarely ever make up for the time SPENT going through all the benchmarking, stability testing (burn-in), system configuration, cost of equipment upgrades such as better coolers, fans, etc, etc... People typically overclock as a hobby with the benefit of having a faster computer.....

To get 15% more speed in your Vegas renders you may spend countless hours and money to reach it. Heck, you might as well just buy the next fastest processor.

There have been times I've applied a very mild overclock to my system by way of a few BIOS settings that I knew were extremely conservative and my existing hardware would easily handle it. You may not yield the highest performance gains of overclocking, but you will get a small speed benefit while most likely not sacrificing reliability with the least amount of time involved with doing it.

Jon

December 9th, 2008, 12:24 PM	#35
David Johns Regular Crew Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Maidstone, Kent, UK Posts: 190	Dell Studio XPS Core i7 Hello, I too have just ordered the Dell Studio XPS Core i7 - the base spec (2.66GHz chip, 6GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, Vista 64), £683 including VAT and delivery. Also ordered their 2904W monitor for £183 - 1920x1080 24" monitor, seemed too good a bargain to miss, will use Vegas' preview to second monitor for full-HD preview on that. Alas, delivery date is only given as "by or before Jan 6th" and customer support tell me that they've been rather overwhelmed by the demand. Upgrading from a single-core Pentium 4 2.5GHz, this is going to be one heck of a difference! Regards David Johns

December 12th, 2008, 01:49 PM	#40
Terry Esslinger Major Player Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Sacramento, Elk Grove. Calif Posts: 306	Does it cost hat much more to have one built? __________________ Puttin the wet stuff on the red stuff!

December 12th, 2008, 07:54 PM	#43
Terry Esslinger Major Player Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Sacramento, Elk Grove. Calif Posts: 306	Again, corrrect me if I am wrong, you would have to buy another MoBo and trade it out in the Dell system if you wanted to overclock it? Probably have to change the power supply and cooling also?? I am a total neophyte at computer building, although I've upgraded a few. __________________ Puttin the wet stuff on the red stuff!

December 9th, 2008, 10:10 AM	#32
Jim Andrada Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Tucson AZ Posts: 2,211	Just ordered a water cooled Boxx i7 system with the 3.2 Ghz chip and 6 GB of memory. The water cooling should permit the chip to overclock significantly - I hope. I got it primarily for 3D rendering (Cinema 4D, Vray, Fry Render) but am confident it will also be a huge improvement for video. I'll find out for sure about two weeks hence when the machine arrives for Xmas. The thing that impressed me most about the chip was that it seems to offer (via overclocking) a big performance boost for single/double threaded apps that don't take advantage of high levels of multi threading. In particular, I run the RealFlow fluid simulator and they only support two threads unless you pay a bunch extra for a license that opens up higher levels of multithreading. I hope I can say goodbye to 24 hour renders of a single image. But in reality I'll probably just crank up the resolution or add more lighting effects and get better results for the same 24 hours.

December 9th, 2008, 10:48 AM	#33
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	The boys at Boxx do not play around. Their configurations seem to be as good as it gets.

December 9th, 2008, 10:59 AM	#34
Jim Andrada Inner Circle Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Tucson AZ Posts: 2,211	Yes, they seem to know what they're doing. Pretty familiar with most of the 3D apps. I've talked with them at SIGGRAPH a couple of times and was favorably impressed. This will be my first Boxx system.

December 9th, 2008, 12:39 PM	#36
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Going from a Pentium 4? Be careful, your head might explode after you see it in action. At the least you will have to pinch yourself.

December 12th, 2008, 11:27 AM	#38
Jonathan Gentry Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 183	Guys I'm not knocking the Dell. It will work great for you but building the system or buying a system with the Asus motherboard really is the way to go. You are leaving alot on the table if you don't overclock this chip. I'm at 3.6Ghz (3.8 ran fine but I backed it down just for good measure) on a 2.66 chip at only the cost of figuring how to overclock it in the bios. The machine will run at 100% utilization for as long as I like with no issues on the stock intel fan. You may think this is going to blow things up but I've been running the Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 3.0Ghz for a long long time with no adverse effects. This i7 chip is much better at overclocking than even the q6600. Just wanted to throw that point out there.

December 12th, 2008, 11:28 PM	#45
Jon McGuffin Major Player Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Carlsbad, CA Posts: 634	Oh, and let me add one more thing here.... And I'm speaking as somebody who HAS overclocked my systems in the past and have always built my pc's... System overclockers mainly do so for sport... The time system overclockers GAIN with the performance increase will rarely ever make up for the time SPENT going through all the benchmarking, stability testing (burn-in), system configuration, cost of equipment upgrades such as better coolers, fans, etc, etc... People typically overclock as a hobby with the benefit of having a faster computer..... To get 15% more speed in your Vegas renders you may spend countless hours and money to reach it. Heck, you might as well just buy the next fastest processor. There have been times I've applied a very mild overclock to my system by way of a few BIOS settings that I knew were extremely conservative and my existing hardware would easily handle it. You may not yield the highest performance gains of overclocking, but you will get a small speed benefit while most likely not sacrificing reliability with the least amount of time involved with doing it. Jon