Dell Dimension XPS Performance Sucks! Why?

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 1:58 pm

I just was assigned this box at an Army lab I am working at. Supposedly, it is a gamer's box and is supposed to perform well. As it turns out, after I have installed all driver updates and tweaked the heck out of it ... it's performance sucks. I get over 40,000 on Aquamark3 on my home box (AMD Barton 3000+ / Radeon 9800 Pro) and over 30,000 on another (AMD 1.6, GeForce3) but this silly little box ranks in at 8,089 on Aquamark3!

Any ideas why? Here is the configuration :

Dell Dimension XPS
Intel 3Ghz P4
800Mhz FSB
nVidia GeForce FX 5200, 128 MB
1GB RAM
Maxtor 160GB IDE HDD

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:01 pm

WCPUID:

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:02 pm

DANGIT! Having problems posting all the SiSoft Sandra stuff and gotta go leave work to pick up kids ... will post it later ...

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:58 pm

The GeforceFX 5200 is your problem.

Quite frankly... it SUCKS.

Consider it the MX card of the FX series.

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:06 am

Yep. 5200.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:48 am

Yep, 5200 = POS

Akasha · Post by **Akasha** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 2:40 am

hahaha! That was an easy question.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 7:17 am

Wow, I had no clue ... Been into Radeon these days ...

Thanks guys

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 7:31 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Vertigo:
The GeforceFX 5200 is your problem.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually It's the DELL XPS and it's proprietary Hardware ..then to top it off they put in a cheap budget NVIDIA card... just to get the FX name in there!

For the life of me, I do not understand why you are attempting to update or even tweek it for a margianal 1% increase.. think about it for a moment DELL :: MOBO.BIOS.PSU.O/S VER. nuff said!

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 11:30 am

No matter how you look at it, if you replace that FX5200 by an FX 5950 or (preferably

) a Radeon 9800 the performance will skyrocket.

Even if it's a POS Dell machine, it still has a 3GHz P4 and 1GB of RAM, it WILL be fairly fast when using a card like that.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:25 pm

Amazing. Never buy a Dell!

Darkside Heartless · Post by **Darkside Heartless** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 3:29 pm

Don't go bashing Dell, mobius, mine runs everything. It's a few years old, but still perfect.

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 6:18 pm

Yea, but do you have to fix them when they break? I see alot of Dells that are just junk. In fact, if its pre-built, and doesn't say alienware, its junk. If it does say alienware, you paid too much, but at least its not entirely junk... just ugly.

But yes, I have a 5200 card, I bought it because I thought it would perform a bit better than my GF2 MX400 64meg... LOW and BEHOLD, the 5200 performed about as well as my old TNT2. So, yea. Bleh. (I'm running a GF4 Ti4200 64meg now)

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 2:00 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Mobius:
Amazing. Never buy a Dell!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Correction: Never buy a pre-built machine. Always build them yourself, or pay someone that knows what the hell they're doing to do it for you.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Fri Feb 20, 2004 7:16 pm

I couldn't give a rat's @$$ if Dell sucks or not ... I am stuck with this machine and MUST deal with it. Dont shi* on my thread

My application is a large textured terrain data set with lots of dynamic texture mapped models flying around in it ... bottlenecks for this type of application tend to be rooted in bus bandwidth issues. Reviewing the table here shows that my card is both memory clock challenged (resulting in a 2X reduction in performance relative to the 5950) and bus bandwidth limited (another 2X reduction).

Check out the following chart ... my graphics card is on the very bottom line ... 4-5X less performance than the Radeon 9800.

I was expecting 4-5X the performance and it appears that by buying THIS BABY I will get another 4X improvement in speed at least.

I got the funds approved today ... Ya, Ya, Ya I love my Radeon 9800 Pro but I am going to use the nVidia card instead so that I have a wider range of cards to test on.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 8:14 am

BTW Ice, sounds like some interesting proggies. Anything game related? I suspect at some time in the future a battlefield commander is going to have a neat 3d projection of the field of engagement that he can view from any angle.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:03 pm

Dell = POFS which = Trash it
Gateway = POFS which = Trash it
Compaq = POFS which = Trash it

HP's are becoming faster and faster and they have always been upgrade friendly and OC Stable

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 12:48 pm

I doubt you could get a 77.2% overclock on a HP like you can get on my computer.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 6:40 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by woodchip:
BTW Ice, sounds like some interesting proggies. Anything game related? I suspect at some time in the future a battlefield commander is going to have a neat 3d projection of the field of engagement that he can view from any angle.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
A Battlefield simulation it is ... not for gaming but for military studies. I got most of my techniques from the game programming industry though ...

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 6:43 pm

So yer werking a better version of America's Army?

Vertigo · Post by **Vertigo** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 3:03 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Krom:
I doubt you could get a 77.2% overclock on a HP like you can get on my computer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I doubt you can get that kinda overclock on any pc, except on one where you picked out the speciic stepping for your cpu

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 9:05 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by AceCombat:
 Dell = POFS which = Trash it
Gateway = POFS which = Trash it
Compaq = POFS which = Trash it

HP's are becoming faster and faster and they have always been upgrade friendly and OC Stable<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ace, you do realize that Compaq and HP are the one and same....right? They merged over two years ago...

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Feb 22, 2004 10:28 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Vertigo:
I doubt you can get that kinda overclock on any pc, except on one where you picked out the speciic stepping for your cpu <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Like my 1700+ tonight?
http://www.indianheadtel.net/~dutennj/overclocktest.gif (dial up beware, 100KB )

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 6:57 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by AceCombat:
 Dell = POFS which = Trash it
Gateway = POFS which = Trash it
Compaq = POFS which = Trash it
HP's are becoming faster and faster and they have always been upgrade friendly and OC Stable<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This from the guy who bought a PackardBell OMFG

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Mon Feb 23, 2004 7:17 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by MD-2389:
Ace, you do realize that Compaq and HP are the one and same....right? They merged over two years ago...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

MTOwned