Dell XPS 420  

Once in a long while, a major PC manufacturer pulls something out of its hat that is quite simply, a jaw dropping piece of machinery. The Dell XPS 420 is a great example of this. The tested configuration packed in an Intel Quad Core processor running at 2.4 Ghz, 2 GB of RAM, a 320 GB HDD, DVD-Writer, and an Nvidia 8600GT. These items constituted the guts of the machine, but the extra trimmings are what make this machine so special.

Design
The cabinet is undoubtedly the show-stopper. The deep black fascia oozes class, and the stylish silver XPS emblazoned on the gun-metal grey side panels will give you a warm and fuzzy feeling every time you look at it. The top of the cabinet has a recessed platform with a rubber cover. This lets you keep your iPod, PSP or what-have-you on it, and the integrated cable management system will keep the cables from becoming a tangled mess. Dell has even included a little LCD display on the cabinet. Using Windows Vista’s SideShow feature, you can have a bunch of widgets running on this. You could even play Solitaire, but it’s more useful to run utilities that display system information at a glance.

If the TV tuner option is chosen, Dell bundles a proper Media Center remote controller, and a very useful doohickey - an IR blaster. This lets you control your set-top box directly from the remote controller. It’s essentially the missing link that completes the Home Theater PC experience, and we must give kudos to Dell for thinking of this. You also get what Dell calls a Xcelerator. This is essentially a video transcoder chip that is supposed to speed up the re-encoding of certain video formats. On the front of the cabinet you have video input ports that let you hook up your VCR or camcorder, and convert analog video into digital formats. This is of limited use if you are using a new camera, since that will store it in a digital format in any case; but users with extensive VHS collections may find this very useful.

A 20 inch LCD monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and a pretty good set of 2.1 speakers complete the package. As an additional extra, you also get a set of Creative EP-630 in-ear headphones.

Performance
Besides being good looking, the XPS is no slouch in the performance stakes either. The motherboard is based off the latest X38 chipset from Intel, and this helps it to a high score of 100 in our real-world benchmark, WorldBench. This is the fastest complete desktop system we’ve tested so far. It also scored 7,345 in PCMark 05 and 5678 in 3DMark06. These scores are very commendable, and if you want a fully-fledged gaming powerhouse, you can choose an Nvidia 8800GT or GTX as an option. Even with the 8600 GT, most games that we tried were quite playable. Crysis needed to be bumped down to 1024x768 and mostly medium settings, but it was playable. Unreal Tournament 3 returned 29 fps at 1680x1050, with graphics set to medium. This is quite good, but it’s not a gaming powerhouse. Spend a bit more and get an Nvidia 8800 GT, and these scores should double at least.

The bundled Adobe Essentials Suite and Soundbooth CS3 add a lot of value for multimedia authoring. The software alone is worth quite a lot of money, and it’s commendable that Dell bundles good quality software tools at this price.

Conclusion
This machine is a winner, no doubt about that. In fact, it does the unthinkable by beating out assembled machines for price. While Rs. 70,000 may seem steep to start with, once you look at this machine, you realize that it’s actually cheaper than anything else out there. We have no hesitation in awarding the Dell XPS 420 a Superior rating. Now if only they’d change the model number from 420 to something else.