Big screw up by Dell......P4 Extreme Edition

Booster

My first post here so Hi.

I ordered a new PC from Dell in early Feb, a top of the range 8300. The day I ordered it there was a mistake on the site where they gave you "€176 off" for chosing a 74G SATA 10,000rpm Raptor instead of adding something on. Anyway, I got the best of everything and it cost €1780 which is pretty good considering the next day the price was back up to €2300.

I recieved the machine on Tuesday. Then!!!!.....only this morning did I notice the "Extreme Edition" along the side of the P4 logo on the boot screen:o I thought, nah, this has gotta be some sort of mistake. The Bios says it has a L3 2mb cache!!

Is there any software I can use to get accurate details on the cpu?

BloodBath

Hi.

You lucky mother ****a. You got a rig like that for only 1780. Count your blessings. I doubt the BIOS is reading it wrong. Dell messed up big time. Be interesting to see some benchmarks. What graphics card u got?

BloodBath

Booster

Hi, heres the full specs.

P4 3.2 EE (so it seems)
1024 ddr 3200
19" CRT
Radeon 9800xt
SB Audigy 2
5.1 speakers with sub (6 speakers)
74 gig 10,000rpm SATA
16x DVD & 8x DVD+R\+RW

Not bad!!:)

I no nothing about benchmarking. What should I download to do the tests?

Sir Random

CPU-Z will tell you your system specs:
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Sandra will bench your cpu/mem/drives etc.
http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/

You lucky b@stard!

Booster

Check this out. Dell dont advertise the EE on their site, here's some prices from the US site.

:eek:

dod

Nice one Booster. Good to see the small guy come out the right side of this sort of error for a change.

Booster

Lookin good. Cheers for the links Sir Random. ww)

I actually ordered a machine from them in December, they f**ked that up, the sales rep was an idiot. I ordered it again, then changes it when I saw the screw up on the site with the HD. They screwed that one up too so I sent in a letter of complaint and chased them every second day on the order. Maybe it was a sweetener!!

Those benchmark tests are big aul' files. :eek:

Sir Random

Please tell me the BIOS isn't a typical Dell with locked fsb? It would be criminal to limit an EE to stock speeds when it has so much potential.

Booster

I haven't got a clue, Sir. Is there an easy way with the BIOS?

CombatCow

Holy $hit,you lucky mofo.tell me, whats that HDD like ?
how fast does it boot into windows, does it make much noise compared to other ''normal'' hdd's.very intrested,prob gonna buy one soon.


CombatCow

tuxy

thats a nice big sig u have there combatcow

Booster

Combatcow, the HD is dead quiet. The fans are a bit droney though. It boots XP in about 25-30 seconds I reckon.

po0k

swap the mobo, PSU and case for €300 and open up the throttles?

BloodBath

Well done enjoy yourself with that one. Hope your not using it to play solitaire.

Why anyone would get a 10,000rpm drive over two 7,200rpm's is beyond me.

With RAID0 set up you get potentially around 14000rpm. I have it set up and it's sweet. Loading times have dropped right down and hard-drives(good-ones) are fairly reliable now. A lot more reliable than one hot 10,000rpm drive. Not to mention you get about 200gigs extra for the same money.



BloodBath

dam0cles

I've had similar experiences with the dell order monkeys. 3 out of four orders I've made with them has had problems (if you ask why i keep going back I'll mumble something about their marketing budget), the worst being the following example.

I got a top of the range (at that time) dimension system from them about a year and two months ago. after unpacking all but one box, i noticed i didn't have my speakers, and that the box that was left was totally the wrong size and shape. Sure enough, no speakers, instead one of their XGA projectors, quoted on the website at that time as €4,500 or so (it has come down a lot since). I stashed it in the wardrobe and waited for them to call....and waited.

Two weeks later and there was no call. There was an address label of a company in Tullamore on it, half covered by an address label to me, and presumably they were missing a projector, but either they weren't too bothered with the wait, or Dell had blamed it on the couriers and reissued their order.

After long moralistic arguments with myself I gave in, rang, and told a slightly incredulous phone jockey that i had a free projector i didn't want. Two days later the courier called again and swapped it for my speakers, and that was the last I saw of it.

Before you applaud my honesty, I did take it out of the packaging and try to fire it up, but then, error piled upon error, they had forgotten to include a power cable!

WizZard

Originally posted by dam0cles
After long moralistic arguments with myself I gave in, rang, and told a slightly incredulous phone jockey that i had a free projector i didn't want. Two days later the courier called again and swapped it for my speakers, and that was the last I saw of it.

Before you applaud my honesty, I did take it out of the packaging and try to fire it up, but then, error piled upon error, they had forgotten to include a power cable!

That is by far the sickest thing I have ever heard.
I can't even type any more I'm so sickened...

/me leaves to go lie down

Booster

Originally posted by BloodBath
Well done enjoy yourself with that one. Hope your not using it to play solitaire.

Have you seen that ad yet?:p

My original order was a 2x120g raid0 but when I saw they were giving 176 off for the raptor I jumped. I basicly wanted to get a fairly top o the line machine that was going to last more than a couple of years, while trying to keep the price down.

But seeing the stuff you guys are talking about is giving me the itch. I gotta get out of here before I start messing about and spending more money.:p

Catch y'all later and thanks for the advise!!:cool:

BloodBath

Ya I saw it

AH well you can always get another 10,000rpm drive down the line and set up a RAID with them. Now that would be fast.


BloodBath

Woden

very nice stuff indeed get 3dmark 2001 SE and 3dmark 2003, and aquamark3 as benchmark tools also and let us know what you get.

dam0cles i still can't believe you gave that back i would have hunted down a power cable or sold the projector to cover the cost of my pc and then some.

data

Col_Loki

Thats amazing, you know you could just sell the EE and buy a regular 3.2ghz with €'s to spare.....

Would love to see how that beast overclocks!! Ohh and the projector, my god thats some story ...... would be sweet to have a projector.

red_ice

although i hate pentiums, and the fact that you went through dell is bad enough....

never the less.

LUCK CUNT

po0k

Originally posted by BloodBath
hard-drives(good-ones) are fairly reliable now. A lot more reliable than one hot 10,000rpm drive.

Most 7200rpm drives these days come with a 1 or 3 year warranty.
The raptors are basically 10K rpm scsi disk mechanisms with a SATA interface.
They come with a 5 year warranty.
They are built to last longer than 7200rpm drives and will happily run 24/7 in a decently organised case, whereas 7200rpm/IDE disks are only ment to be run for about 12-14hours per day max.

If he wants storage 160Gig drives are €130 or less each nowadays, whereas the raptors cost ~$230 and he still got money dropped from the price, saving him €€€s

joePC

dam0cles your a dam fool for giving it back, Jesus why did you do that

ahhhhhhhhgrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggrrrrrrrr,

Sickend also.........................

sceptre

Originally posted by dam0cles
Before you applaud my honesty, I did take it out of the packaging and try to fire it up, but then, error piled upon error, they had forgotten to include a power cable!

AFAIK they tend to put the power cables for a complete system order in the little box with the keyboard these days. As you got a monitor destined for someone else the power cable was in their other box.

Dempsey

Lucky Lucky Lucky ****

A pat on the back from me.

Do as Syxpack Says, Get a new case, PSU and MObo and fire it up

jesus_thats_gre

Happened to a mate a few months ago with Dell too. Ordered a 3.0 P4 and got a 3.2 P4 instead. At that time, there was about 400 euro in the difference. Nice!

Dempsey

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Happened to a mate a few months ago with Dell too. Ordered a 3.0 P4 and got a 3.2 P4 instead. At that time, there was about 400 euro in the difference. Nice!

Actually when I ordered a Dell 3 years ago I got a 2Ghz w/512Kb instead of 256Kb, 120Gb instead of 80Gb. At the time I think i saved myself 300yoyos. Also I ordered on the last day of the january sale(discount and free delivery) and I got 5% off by ordering through my employers. Grand.

netman

Originally posted by Sir Random
Please tell me the BIOS isn't a typical Dell with locked fsb? It would be criminal to limit an EE to stock speeds when it has so much potential.

Well, there's not much potential left in it, they're pretty much pushed as far as they go. If you're lucky you'll get 3.6 GHz out of it - hardly anything to write home about

BloodBath

Well 3.6 would be easy. You could get 3.8 and 4.0 with decent cooling. Even at 3.6 thats a 12.5% increase which is pretty meaty in EE terms.


That processor is something else.


BloodBath

Dr Bolouswki

I work for Dell sales and it's true, most of the sales people don't know a whole lot about CPu edition types, cache etc etc. Face it folks - Dell is a huge multi-million pound business and their consumer machines represent less than 5% of their sales... just because someone gets an extreme edition when it was meant to be normal probably occurred because there was a slight delay in the normal ones and rather than have people wait we shipped it with a better CPU, or else a CPU was thrown in the wrong box...

It's quite natural for enthusiasts to slag off generic machines - same for cars, same for music purists slagging off 'mainstream' pop - its all part of the game...

For the record, you can currently get a Dell with a prescott instead of a northwood (512kb cache vs 1MB cache FOR THE SAME PRICE although you would be waiting a couple of weeks to get it) it means nothing to Dell, prices and specs on individual machines pail into insignificance compared to the bigger picture...

Sir Random

Well 3.6 would be easy. You could get 3.8 and 4.0 with decent cooling. Even at 3.6 thats a 12.5% increase which is pretty meaty in EE terms.


That processor is something else.


BloodBath

Yeah, and the extra bandwith at 230fsb+ would give a nice performance boost with good ram.

That's another Dell snag though, getting enhanced ram to work with Dell mobos. Do you still have to use proprietary ram with Dells?

Woden

Originally posted by Killah_B

For the record, you can currently get a Dell with a prescott instead of a northwood (512kb cache vs 1MB cache FOR THE SAME PRICE although you would be waiting a couple of weeks to get it) it means nothing to Dell, prices and specs on individual machines pail into insignificance compared to the bigger picture...

yeah but current northwood outperform equivalently clocked prescotts so that is not the way forward, and especially in a custom built rig you want the northwood for overclocking.

bizmark

"slaps data"

People that buy from dell dont buy for overclocking nor do they know the difference between the latest core's (well most dont)

i think its pritty pointless talking about overclocking on a dell pc tbh

Woden

of course they don't but he's saying you can get a prescott with larger cache then a northwood but at the end of the day i'm saying that the equivalently clocked northwoods are better. you can't overclock the processor on a dell machine they are fsb locked afaik.

some people though still buy dell machines and are aware of there limitations but can't be arsed with custom builds

Dr Bolouswki

ah yeah, I mean, I build me own too I just wouldn't write off Dell machines as being garbage - of course theyre crap compared to what we can build ourselves...

ol' wans ring Dell looking for gaming machines for little timmy and I try selling them a machine with an AGP slot rather tahn the glorified typewriters that Dell advertise and they think I'm trying to rip them off

'But I want the one with the flat screen for €849 - why won't that play games?

You try and help them but they just see the outside of the machine and they know so little that they think you are just trying to rip them off when you tell them to spend the money on the PC and to just get a CRT monitor (Ohhh you mean the old fashioned ones, sure they're rubbish!):(

Still, the pay is great!:D

Col_Loki

lol, general public really dont have much of a clue at all do they!! Spending that much money you think a little research would be in order.

Ive meet so many people that base a computers worth on the operating system, ie if it has windows XP it has to be better than the one running 2k..... etc (vise versa because "2000" looks bigger than "XP").

Sir Random

The current Prescotts at stock are a downgrade from Northwoods and they run hotter. Apparently, Intel have stopped distributing the Prescott until the new steppings are ready in April.

Meanwhile, a report on Silicon Investor claimed that a Dell representative had said Prescott processors were recalled in February, and stated that no Prescott machines would be available from Dell until mid-April.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14648

Woden

interesting enough i just saw a review of the 3.2ghz prescott vs northwood and heat issues aside the prescott did quite well, in a number of categories, in almost all games is was just a little off and in some games more significant however there was no encoding benchmarks in the review.

data

bizmark

see data i told you on msn the new intell core will be a failure for the time being

Gerry

First of all, raid0 is not more reliable, if one of those drives fails, you lose everything.
Second, Booster got a pretty good deal. I'm not sure why they are going to go ripping their machine apart, and selling the case, mobo and psu. They are unlikely to get much money for these really. They may be able to clock the chip to 3.6 - 3.8, but is it not better to wait until they need to do that?
Of course Booster, if you have money to burn, and want to try to get a faster machine which runs as quietly as your new dell, by all means go for it.

Booster

Thanks Gerry. I know nothing about about overclicking/modding/building a machine ect. This machine is excellent. I'm actually playing games again!!!...and with everything maxed out. I know there will come a time when I'll need to start looking at all this stuff, but until then, I'll leave well alone.

BTW, I'm shocked at how much some of the chips can be overclocked.:eek: Good stuff.