Dell XPS 8300 Review (Core i5/Nvidia)

1. Introduction2. Dell XPS 8300 (Bundle)3. Dell XPS 8300 (Exterior)4. Dell XPS 8300 (Interior)5. Dell XPS 8300 (Super High Res Gallery)6. Testing Methodology and Configuration7. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra8. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Synthetic: PCMark 710. Synthetic: 3DMark 1111. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark12. Synthetic: Hard Drive Performance13. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.014. Real World: Flash HD Performance15. Real World: BluRay Playback With Cyberlink PowerDVD16. Real World: MKV 1080p Playback17. Real World: Media Encoding With Cyberlink Media Espresso18. Gaming: Resident Evil 519. Gaming: Alien V Predator20. Gaming: Dirt 321. Gaming: Dead Island22. Gaming: From Dust23. Technical: Acoustics Performance24. Technical: Thermal Dynamics25. Closing Thoughts26. View All Pages

Life in 2011 is hectic, and we don't all have the time or skills necessary to build a PC from the ground up. There are many system makers in the UK, but Dell are assuredly one of the biggest, offering a huge range of solutions to suit every desire and budget. Today we are looking at the compact, yet stylish XPS 8300 – a performance range which operates alongside their ultra high end Alienware series.

The XPS 8300 can be configured with a wide range of hardware and the system we are reviewing today ships with the very capable Intel Core i5 2500, Bluray drive, a generous 2TB of storage and includes an Nvidia GTX560 ti for high resolution gaming demands.

With a price starting at £429, it certainly won't break the bank. Our review sample has been significantly enhanced when compared to the entry level specification however.

XPS 8300 Review machine:

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500 (3.30ghz)
Memory: 6GB DDR3 1333mhz
Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX560 ti
Optical: BluRay Drive
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
Storage: 2TB Hard Drive configured in RAID 0 ‘stripe' (2x1TB 7,200rpm)

We priced our specific build at around £1,329.00 inc vat.

The Dell XPS 8300 arrives in a large brown box with the name of the company on the sides.

Inside, the components are shipped in a separate box. This includes a power cable, mouse, keyboard, literature on the product, and a disc of software.

The keyboard and mouse are the Dell entry level products, a Dell Optical Scroll USB mouse with two buttons, and a Dell USB Entry keyboard. They are both perfectly fine to use all the time, but gamers and those who like higher level products may very well keep these for emergency situations.

Our review sample wasn't protected inside a plastic wrap, just between foam. We would assume however that this review sample has been circulating in the UK and a protective cover has went missing.

The product itself is shipped in a rather diminutive case which is actually rather appealing. It is a two tone black/cream colour scheme which is a proprietary Dell design.

The front of the case has a slidable panel which holds hides several USB ports. There is a card reader at the very top of the case, and a DVD burner (or bluray) drive resides in the second slot, with an eject button on the right.

We like the flowing curves of the chassis, and there are several nice touches incorporated, such as a engraved ‘XPS' logo on the side panels. Connectivity at the top is covered by several USB ports alongside a headphone and microphone port.

Underneath are several rubber feet to ensure the chassis doesn't slide around, especially on a wooden floor.

The rear is neat enough, with the PSU mounted at the top of the case and a large fan acting as an exhaust. The video card offers DVI, HDMI and Displayport output.

Rear connectivity supports eSATA, four more USB ports, a gb lan connector and various audio out connectors.

The internal routing isn't the best we have seen, with a bunch of cables laying loose next to the power supply at the top of the case.

As there isn't a fan at the top it shouldn't cause an airflow problem, but it does look slightly substandard when compared against some other systems we have received for review in recent months. We also noticed Dell are using memory sticks without heatspreaders which always raises an eyebrow in the Kitguru offices. Supplying heatspreaders with memory adds very little, if anything to the overall cost. Heatspreaders seem commonplace in 2011, so it is always disappointing to see a company compromising in this regard.

Dell are using a 460W power supply which is made in China. The model number is ‘H460AD-00'

The two 1TB hard drives are configured in a RAID 0 partition to help improve the overall performance. We will look at this later in the review.

There is a rear mounted exhaust fan to help improve ambient temperatures. The Nvidia GTX 560 ti is mounted to the case with a special bracket. This ensures no movement will occur during rough shipping.

The internal build raises no concerns, it is just a little untidy, and we were disappointed with the choice of memory used.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.

Our version of the Dell XPS 8300 is based around the Intel Core i5 2500 processor which is a 3.3ghz processor, capable of a turbo frequency of 3.7ghz. It is built on 32nm architecture with 6 megabytes of shared Level 3 cache. This is not the unlocked ‘k' version, but Dell don't allow for overclocking anyway in their bios, so it makes little odds.

The motherboard is a Dell branded H67 Sandybridge model. There is 6GB of 1333mhz DDR3 installed via a 2x2GB and 2x1GB configuration. The memory is set to 9-9-9-24 @ 2T timings.

The Nvidia GTX 560 ti is a very capable graphics card and one that gamers have adopted en masse. It is built around 40nm architecture and features 352 unifed shaders with 1.25GB of memory connected via a 320 bit memory interface. The core clock operates at 732mhz and the GDDR5 memory at 950mhz.

The drivers were a little outdated (270.57), so we updated them manually to 280.26 WHQL.

We wouldn't normally mention it, but we feel Dell have the pricing of the GTX 560 ti configured wrongly. According to their system builder this card costs £370 more when upgrading from the onboard Intel HD2000.

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit
SiSoft Sandra
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cyberlink Media Espresso
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra V11
PCMark 7
3DMark 11
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
From Dust
Resident Evil 5
Dead Island

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter

All results are gained from multiple test runs to ensure any abnormalities are removed before publication.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The Core i5 2500 is a solid performer as can be seen from the benchmark results above. Memory performance is also decent considering it is only 1333mhz rated.

CINEBENCH R11.5 is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

A score of 5 points in Cinebench highlights a performance oriented processor and one perfectly suited to 3D rendering tasks.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

PCMark 7 indicates a well balanced machine and a final score of 3319 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

We tested the system at the default performance setting.

3DMark 11 scores are healthy, which we would expect from the Nvidia GTX560 Ti, which is a very capable discrete graphics solution.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

The Nvidia GTX560 Ti powered XPS 8300 manages to score an average of almost 43 frames per second in this intensive benchmark. Very good results.

Dell are using two 1TB hard drives configured into a RAID 0 (striped configuration). This is a particularly good move to enhance performance, although if one of the drive fails, then the partition is lost. There is no fault tolerance with Raid 0.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

We would expect to get a score of around 130-140 MB/s with a single 7,200rpm mechanical hard drive, so the results are spot on, indicating performance around 265 MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark sequential read test. Obviously the 4k performance is much lower than a Solid State Drive.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

ATTO Disk Benchmark verifies the previous results, showing maximum performance in the 280 MB/s read and 250 MB/s write sector. Including two drives in RAID 0 is a very good move to boost overall system responsiveness and performance.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evaluate motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on BluRay. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content, so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Nvidia GTX 560 Ti
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210, ideal for use as a high definition media center if needed.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

Overall, the CPU demand averaged 6 percent. This system can easily handle high definition flash content with plenty of CPU time left over for multitasking demands.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of ‘The Road’.

With Nvidia hardware acceleration enabled in Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 the overall CPU load was very low indeed, averaging around 6 percent.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).

We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.

MKV is a more intensive file format to play back, especially within Windows Media Player. The system averages 32% overall utilisation, which is still a very good result.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

The Core i5 2500 processor manages to complete the encoding task in just over 19 minutes, which is a good result. Turning on nVidia CUDA acceleration enables the GTX 560 Ti to reduce the final time by around 8 minutes, which is a staggering improvement.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Even with 16x Anti Aliasing, the Dell XPS 8300 has no problem maintaining an average frame rate over 100. It never drops below 91 frames per second.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

This is an intensive Direct X 11 engine, but the system is capable of maintaining playable frame rates at all times.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

At these incredibly high image quality settings the system had no problem powering through the engine, averaging 51 frames per second.

Dead Island is set in the fictional island of Banoi, located off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The main characters wake up in the Palms Resort hotel to find the island attacked by zombies and mysteriously, they are immune to whatever is making people into zombies. As they try to find and help other survivors, they must also find a way to escape the island as well.

Dead Island is not an intensive engine, even when maxing out the in game settings. The Dell XPS 8300 maintains an average of 112 frames per second.

Campaigns in From Dust are structured as a sequence of missions, whereby completing certain objectives expedites the tribe’s progress and bestows additional powers, such as the capacity to jellify water. Tribal shamans alert the player to natural disasters, notably tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, shortly before they occur. These disasters can be inhibited through creative, physical manipulation of the environment: a tsunami can be jellified, wildfires extinguished, and lava flows diverted.

We are including this game today as it is one of the best indie games we have played in recent years.

The GTX560 Ti has no problems maintaining a solid frame rate around 30 fps at all times, only dropping a few times to 27 during heavy onscreen volcano activity.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The system is very quiet indeed and is actually not audible when resting at idle, or when watching a bluray disc. When fully loaded, the fans spin up and it outputs around 33 dBa. These are very impressive results indeed and would make the system ideal for a living room or bedroom environment.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running Furmark and Cinebench together. Room ambient temperatures were 23c.

We measured results with CPUID Hardware Monitor software. The CPU was loaded with Cinebench in a loop and Furmark stress test.

System temperatures are quite comfortable, and while the nVidia GTX560 ti temperatures seem high under load, this was achieved when running the synthetic Furmark stress test. When gaming, the GPU temperatures were around 8c less (77c).

The Dell XPS 8300 is a great looking computer, built inside a diminutive, yet stylish chassis not available anywhere else. The two tone cream and black finish is appealing and connectivity is well catered for, with ports available on the top, front and back of the case.

In regards to performance, the system didn't fail to deliver, handling the latest Direct X 11 engines with ease, thanks to the inclusion of the powerful Nvidia GTX 560 ti graphics card. When this is combined with the Core i5 2500 processor we found it could handle anything we threw at it, including 3D rendering and 1080p encoding duties. The RAID 0 hard drive configuration helps to improve overall system responsiveness and is a worthwhile option to utilise.

Internally, the system is well put together, although the routing is not the best we have seen and actually quite messy. We would assume that when Dell put a machine such as this into mass production that they are aiming purely for build speed. Negatively, we were also disappointed to see that they were using ram modules without heatspreaders. I would class this as unforgivable in 2011, as the costs for this upgraded memory would be negligible.

The XPS 8300 has many uses, it is powerful enough to handle gaming duties on a 24 inch monitor or 1080P television set. It is quiet enough to double up as a media center in a living room or bedroom. It is also small enough to fit into a variety of environments, while maintaining a sleek and attractive appearance.

We do have some concerns with the Dell upgrade tool however, as we mentioned earlier in the review, the cost of the GTX560 ti upgrade for instance is £370 extra. This seems a little over the odds to us and it would be much cheaper to buy a GTX560 ti and upgrade the machine yourself. Obviously this somewhat defeats the purpose of buying a prebuilt machine.

The configuration we received for review costs £1,329 according to the pricing on their site as of today. It is a solid machine and it will suit a wide audience, but it can't earn a MUST HAVE award at this price as there are many alternatives available in the UK, some of which would cost less. That said, we really did like the custom chassis and selection of components, it is a very capable all round performance system.

Pros:

• The case design is very appealing.
• quiet.
• runs cool.
• Raid 0 configuration performs well.
• great CPU and GPU performance.

Cons:

• rather expensive when compared to other machines with similar specifications.
• some of the ‘upgrade' pricing seems high.
• no heatspreaders on memory.
• internal cable routing could be neater.

Kitguru says: A well built machine with balanced specifications.

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