Dell Xps 720, Still Worth?

Aivia

I was thinking of buying an xps 720 here where I live.

I really like the look of the case, the aluminium is just great.
The only problem im having is whether I get this 720 now before its sold or wait it out for a 730 for the atx form factor. ( I would like a 730 but none are available at the moment, plus I can get a decent deal on this 720)

My main worry is the q6600 being abit too old at this point and with a btx motherboard im just locking myself into that unless I go about modding it a whole bunch ( which is not really worth it when a 730 exists )

I own a pc with a 4690k and gtx 970 plus a dell xps 630 with a x5650 and gtx 760.
I was just wondering what performance loss you get out of the q6600 and 970 compared to waiting for a 730, then upgrading to a newer i5/i7/xeon

Thanks.

TerrorFirmer

It's a nice case and extremely heavy but you would have to do quite a bit of modding to fit a new setup into it.

The Q6600 is OK for browsing the web and would get through stuff like CS: GO, FIFA, Farming Simulator etc to a certain extent but that's about it at this point.

In terms of all the latest games - GTA V, BF1, Fallout 4, etc, it's completely and utterly useless.

To put it into figures, in games like the above, the loss in peformance would be on average around 500%, up to 7-800% in CPU punishing games like Battlefield 1 online.

So basically you're just buying it for the case. Nothing is salvageable in it, except maybe the hard drive if you want to re-use that, but the board/cpu/power supply etc are all useless (the 720 uses non-standard power connectors on psu/board).

I'm not quite sure from your post if you realize that you cannot upgrade the processor in the 720 to i3/i5/i7 as it's an old socket 775 board. Since then there's been Intel socket's 1366, 1156, 1155, 1150, 1151 in the mainstream. The 720 Q6600 platform is over ten years old and performs as such.

Aivia

Thanks for the reply,

Yes I do know that I cant upgrade it to a i5 or i7 on this socket 775 board (which is why I kept referencing the atx 730 version)
I can understand there being a huge difference in performance over a q6600 and a i7 7700k for example, but I would never be upgrading it that far anyway.
I think that if I get a q9650 or mod the socket to 771 with a xeon for a little more speed, would there be a huge difference compared to an i7 920 or i5 2500? (of course there is going to be a difference but if I was going to get a 730 as compared to this, spend the money upgrading it to one of these above cpus, then compare it only to find a 10fps difference between the q9650.

Really I dont know what im expecting to get in reply as its one of those "it depends" answers.
Its really just based on the games I would be playing and such so its hard to just get an estimate answer.

If I could find an xps 730 for 250ish I would drop this instantly but its just that I cant find one anywhere. (I have let one go on ebay that was about 200 pounds but I do own an xps 630 and I understand the ludicrous postage due to weight)

TerrorFirmer

The Q9650 or one of the Xeon's with the pin mods (way cheaper option) is still way behind an i7-920 or i5-2500, yes, it would be a huge stepdown in performance.

The problem here is that between the cost of all the various parts, at the end of the day you'd still have a slow, obsolete and substandard processor paired with slow, old ram - when something like a G4560 processor is just €70 new now and runs with ddr4 2400mhz ram and destroys any old Core2Quad or 775-based Xeon.

Some of the latest games would still run OKish on an overclocked Q9550/60 but it's still very substandard and a waste of money in my opinion....especially when superior 1st generation i7's (1366 or 1156) can be bought for €30-40 2nd hand.

Even if the games you want to play are fairly low intensity (CS:GO, Overwatch, FIFA, etc for arguments sake) it's still a very poor use of your money for an underpowered and dead, obsolete decade old platform.

A Q6600 based XPS 720 is only worth about €50 from a hardware POV for everything except the case, so it's up to you how much you value the case really. I got a full 720 system for around €100 a year ago from adverts.ie. I also got it for the case but ended up getting rid of it as it was just way too big and heavy, it's a monster.

Aivia

I understand what you're saying about the case being heavy and big.

I know for like 50 euro you can get a very nice, brand new pc case but that also means anyone else can just buy one aswell.
I mainly buy these branded systems such as an Acer predator g7700, Alienware alx or Dell xps 9100 because they are more unique ( I guess its just the inner hipster in me trying to be different from everyone else)

I have a friend who has a q6600 system and I have my 630i with an X5650 at 4.2 so I might go down to him sometime today and we can run some benchmarks (im just curious how much difference at this point)

I will be looking out for a dell xps 730 or even better 730x system on adverts over the next while. Im straying from my goal of building pcs so as cheap as possible so I can enjoy them for awhile then sell them on at a profit.

TerrorFirmer

The X5650 will destroy it in benchmarks. In fact, at 4.2Ghz, it's perfect for even the very latest games with a good card and would be more comparable to modern processors than older ones.

By comparison the Q6600 at stock speed (2.4Ghz) is about 600-800% slower, and if heavily overclocked it's still massively inferior due to the older architecture (and less cores naturally, but primarily its the core performance which is lacking).

Try running something like GTA V, BF1 online, Fallout 4 etc and you will see a night and day difference, or else run some simple number crunch benchmarks either.

EG - BF1 would run on a X5650 @ 4.2Ghz at 70-80fps+ effortlessly, a Q6600 even overclocked to say 3.5Ghz would struggle to hit 30fps in most cases.

X5650 = still completely viable for the latest and greatest games with high end card

Q6600/Q6700/Q8400/Q9550/Q9650/ and all the rest of them etc = even heavily overclocked, unable to handle the latest and greatest games very well and will bottleneck even low end cards.

Also remember that the X5650 is faster DDR3 platform, the XPS 720 board is DDR2.

TerrorFirmer

The last time I used a Q6600 was actually the XPS720 in question, out of morbid curiosity I tried to play Battlefield Hardline on it.

In 64 player multiplayer, at the stock 2.4Ghz, the framerate was about 20fps - and that's nowhere near as demanding a game as the likes of BF1 online!

Comparatively, I've played the much newer and more intensive BF1 on a 1st gen i7-860 @ 2.80Ghz, and it runs fine at 50-60fps...I would expect the X5650 to do better as BF1 makes use of more cores, and especially with your overclock it would fly.

Just to put it into context.

ScumLord

Dells were always robust, dependable office computers. Then they went for the consumer market and everything fell apart.

It's been a while since I've done anything with a dell case but I found them to be fairly customised to their own needs. The case I was working on had plastic tubing and veins to direct air, which was fine for the hardware it came with but may not work at all with other cards which would be bigger. So all that would have to come out, the case was very cramped inside despite it being a big heavy lump of a thing.


I wouldn't see any advantage to going for Dell, they use fairly crappy components last time I checked they're cases aren't designed with upgrades outside their own range in mind and it's all over priced for what you're getting.

I got a cooler master case with my last build (I had gone cheap before) and the difference is pretty incredible, it's like they really think about how the case will be used and provide for most your needs. I really don't see me changing the case any time soon, so any upgrades will be going into this case. The case I had before looked great but was a pain to work with.

Aivia

I can 100% agree these dell xps case, for being as big and heavy as they are, do not have much space on the inside compared to newer cases.

The plastic air ducting stuff is no bother for me as I 3d printed all the parts to fit my specific 630i build.

I will wait for a 730 though as I still really like the way these cases look (plus you wont find aluminium that thick on a new case unless you spend quite abit) p.s I know its just a basic steel shell on the inside the aesthetics is what matters to me.

I will for abit of fun go to my 4.8ghz profile on the 630, I dont know a huge amount about how games use your cores but does it matter if I disable hyperthreading? With it off I could almost go to 5ghz (the pc would explode due to heat at that overclock so I should probably move to water if I was going to do that, temps are touching 90 at 4.8 which I would be ok with but the pc crashed once after afew hours stress testing)