Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

Ok, ok, I need to stop raving about my new PC, but it is awesome and it does play games like no other PC I have owned - period. So let's talk about one of the games that I am playing at the moment; Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or COD4 for short. Guys: this IS by far the coolest FPS game I have ever played. This game was made for me. It is fast paced, has great graphics and most important: immersive action. Playing the game is just like being in a movie: I do not kid you. I have never experienced somthing quite like it.
In this game you play several characters both from the SAS and the USMC. As such you go on several missions that are intense and really realistic.

The coolest thing is that you really feel part of the game: right at the beginning you get flown in over sea in a storm to land on a freigther ship to recover clandestine nuclear materials. The ship gets blown to pieces and starts to sink fast. You have to run for your life to get out and literally jump into the back of a heli, which you barely make. Man, that was intense!

But even more stunning is the part where you are in a helicopter, just after resqueing a female Apache chopper pilot and their is a nuclear explosion! Oh my... I have never before felt more like being in the middle of it. Just awesome!

Also unbelieveably cool is the part where you become a thermal imaging TV operator aboard an AC-130 gunship. It is just like all the cool footage you have seen on TV from the first Gulf War: you can use a gatling gun and some awesome other guns to level the area around the good guys.

In short: get this game if you really like FPS games. This is the best! Just check out the video's below and judge for yourself (all footage is in-game! I can vouch for that!).

COD4

Wow, I'm impressed with my new PC for sure. It's a blast for real. I don't know where to begin telling what I like about it, but let's start with the fact that it's blazing fast compared to my P4 2.8ghz. Vista is very responsive and everything worked straight away out of the box. Windows Media Center is really cool! I very much enjoy watching TV on my Pc and having a DVR (digital video recorder). The program guide works well and I had no trouble installing the IR-remote. The 20" flat screen is very nice looking and is pixel perfect.

And the videocard performs just... awesome! I installed a bunch of games like Battlefield 2 and they al perform very well at the highest resolutions. I was particulary impressed with Half-Life2. It just looks visually stunning! HDR (High Dynamic Range) is looking very nice. And even at 1680x1050 with everything turned on high detail and 6xAA on it got a 135fps doing the performance test.

I did install Crysis and it looks very nice with all details on very high; I haven't had a chance yet to benchmark that but it really is cool to have a PC that is able to run anything I throw at it.

The only thing is that I now have to re-arrange my 7 PC's so this one fits in somewhere ;-)

Got mail this morning: due to popular demand delivery of my Dell XPS 420 is delayed by 8 working days and now should be delivered at the end of the month (Jan. 29th). Bummer! The thing is: I know exactly what (part) is delaying my order. It's a shortage of the Nvidia Geforce 8800GT videocard. Ever since this GPU was released - October 29, 2007 - it has been in high demand because of the incredible price/performance ratio. This GPU only performs marginally less than the 8800GTX (Nvidia's flagship) but is about $200 cheaper, so it takes much away of the value from that high end GPU. Also the Dell XPS 420 was announced only 6 days earlier than the 8800 GT (Oct. 23rd, 2007) and has been in high demand as well. A combination that is killing on delivery times :-(

I guess in the meantime I will be drooling over all the YouTube video's starring my precious ;-)



Update (Jan 14th 2008): I spoke to a Dell representative this morning and she told me that I will get an extra € 50,- discount on my PC as a compensation for my inconvenience. That's what I call Customer Service.

So call me a risk taker - living on the edge of reason - but yesterday I ordered myself a Dell XPS 420 desktop PC. Before I get into the technical specs of my new PC let me explain how I ended up with a Dell. I have been looking for a new PC for a few weeks now. At first I considered buying a laptop. I had my eyes on the Dell XPS M1330, a nice, small laptop with good specs; you can order it with a nice 13,3" LED backlit screen (better lighting and less power consumption). But knowing myself and what I use my PC for (a lot of gaming), I figured I could get a better deal on a desktop - as laptops still are a lot more expensive and have lesser specs. I wanted to spend about 1200 Euro's and the laptops I looked at (with the specs I want) are a lot more expensive.

So I ditched the idea of buying a laptop and started to research what specs I would need to get a new, fast desktop multimedia PC that at least can run a game like Crysis smoothly. Crysis - at the moment - is a game that is so heavy on your GPU that if you have the hardware to run it, you can damn well run virtually any other game out there without any problems. In fact: getting a good benchmark with Crysis is the holy grail for many video card manufacturers.

To cut a long story short: you need at least a nVidia Geforce 8800 series videocard to run this game. The 8800 series currently has three models: the GTS, the GT and the GTX. The GTS is bottom of the line, the GTX top of the line (which means you pay way too much for it) and - you guessed it - the GT is positioned in the middle. The 8800 GT outperforms it's rivals ATI HD2900XT and ATI HD3870 in most situations. But the really cool thing about the 8800 GT is, that it performs only slightly less (10-15%) than the GTX, but is a lot cheaper; making it a smart choice for gamers.

Having settled that (choice of GPU), the rest was easy: Intel easily outperforms AMD when they came up with the Dual Core (used to be the other way around), so I was going for the Intel platform. Other than that you want off course an optical drive (DVD +/-RW), a fast hard disk and components that work together well (memory, motherboard etc.).

I started to compare prices for systems with these specs online and I found out that Dell actually has systems that are very competitive in terms of specs and pricing! There are several Dutch companies that can build you a custom PC, but I found out that they are actually about 20-40% higher(!) than Dell with the XPS series. Also I found out that delivery time on those PC's can be as much as 20-30(!) workings days and you still pay for delivery!

After all the comparing of specs and prices I still kept ending up with the Dell XPS 420. It has good base specs that you can tweak yourself, which I like a lot. In fact; every Dell you order is assembled by hand according to your personal specs. Now, I am aware of the bad reputation that Dell has with some people, but the people that I know that actually own a Dell PC (either private or business) are pretty happy with Dell's service and support. So I figured: why not.

So what did I end up with and what did it cost me? Well, here is the low-down:

My Dell XPS 420 specs:

Dell XPS Casing with Windows SideShow
Viiv Q6600 Quad Core Processor 2.40GHz, 1066Mhz FSB, 8MB cache
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz Memory (standard 667Mhz)
512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT GPU
640GB Serial ATA2 Raid 0 Stripe (2x320GB) 7200Rpm Dual HDD
DVD+/-RW (Read/Write) 16x and CD-RW (Read/Write)/DVD-ROM (Reader) 48x
Integrated HDA 7.1 Dolby Digital soundcard
TV Tuner and AVIO / Accellerator
19-in-1 Bluetooth Media Card Reader
USB 2.0 and FW 400/800
20.1'' Wide Screen Flat Panel (TCO99) DVI-D HDCP-compliant 1680 x 1050 / 60 Hz

Looking at the combination of CPU, GPU, fast RAM and the RAID 0 hard disk configuration this system should really perform well with games and other multi-media (i.e.; editing video).

And the best thing of all: the above configuration costs me exactly € 1205,- with no delivery costs. Because of that, and the fact that I had a coupon that gave me an extra 10% discount on any configuration, I threw in the 20" widescreen flat panel screen. Without that, it would have been € 1026,- So, not only am I right on budget, I think I got a very good deal for a mid-range to high-end system.

Dollar vs Euro
Some blogs ago I bitched about the fact that although the Dollar is very low against the Euro, you do not benefit from that with - let's say - Apple. This is not the case with Dell! My Dell XPS 420 costs exactly € 1205,- and - as said - includes a 20" wide screen. Now, when you go over to the US Dell website, and you configure the 420 with (roughly) the same specs as the one I ordered, you end up with a total around $1799 Dollars (note that the US version of the 420 has 3gb of RAM standard, and does not come with RAID 0 stripe but RAID 1). So at least Dell has the decency to not rip you off.

Are there any downsides? Yeah: the system comes with Microsoft Vista (ugh!!). I rather would have had it with good old XP.

I should receive my spanking new system before or on Thursday January 17th. That's 9 working days guys. Not 20 or 30 as with their Dutch competitors who - by the way - do not deliver a 20" flat panel, nor a RAID configured system for anything near €1200.

To be continued!