Product Reviews

With Intel and AMD hoping to get one up on the other by accelerating their respective product roadmaps, this year will be filled with more choice than ever for the PC user. First up is Intel's new 0.13 micron-based 2.2GHz Pentium 4, with initial products featuring 512Kb of Level 2 cache, though for now the front side bus speed remains the same.

Dell supplied us with its new Dimension 4400 for our first look at this 'new' processor, and for such a cutting-edge performance chip there's a surprising focus on value and simplicity. We first looked at this system case with the Dimension 4300 (see Reviews, issue 86, p153), and favourably remarked upon its design that ensured the no-nonsense buyer was served well. At £1,149, the 4300 offered a good combination of features and performance at a very tempting price, so how will the fastest Pentium 4 fare in this chassis?

A lot of attention has gone into the case design, with screwless access and maintenance the order of the day. Case access is dependent on two buttons at the top and bottom - excellent if your system sits horizontally, but, as the optical drive orientation suggests, the system is most likely to sit vertically.

Utilising Intel's DDR version of its 845 chipset, the Pentium 4 chip is supported with 256Mb of PC2100 memory on one DIMM, so it will be some time before you need the second of the two memory sockets. The modest dimensions of the microATX motherboard also restrict peripheral slot counts, with four PCI slots all occupied bar one. Two of the cards serve connectivity with a V.90 modem and a 10/100BaseTX Ethernet adaptor, while the excellent Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (marketed as the VideoLogic SonicFury in the UK) fills the other PCI slot.

Further restrictions are evident from the case design, with both the front-facing 5.25in bays already occupied by the optical drives. There's no opportunity here to install a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum drive bay,

ADVERTISEMENT

though if you plan to do this you can ask Dell to supply a DVD/CD-RW combo unit initially. Of the two front-facing 3.5in bays, one is occupied by a floppy; the other is empty.

There's more room for expansion via the internal 3.5in bays, though; only one is occupied by the capacious 80Gb Seagate Barracuda hard disk, leaving two free. Quick-release clips are pinned to the innards should you go down this route, but Dell clearly isn't marketing this system for upgraders. It's built for quick and simple access for small amounts of maintenance, nothing more. However, there are two extra USB ports front mounted with a headphone connector, tucked under a flap.

If you want a quiet working environment, system noise is virtually non-existent with the notable exclusion of a processor fan made possible with a huge fin-only heatsink. A system case fan is directed over the processor with some ducting, though this and the power supply fan are also impressively quiet.

The case design may be restrictive, but it's certainly stylish. An all-black colour scheme extends right down to the keyboard, mouse and monitor. The black bezel around the monitor actually aids in enhancing the contrast and depth of richness in the colours of an otherwise standard 17in (15.8in viewable) Dell-branded Trinitron display. On the downside, a captive VGA cable means that any broken pins will render the monitor useless.

In this issue of PC Pro (see Labs, p58) you'll find both evesham.com and Mesh submitting 2.2GHz Pentium 4 systems with very different specs. The Evesham Evolution 2.2 is an unrelenting luxury system for £1,999, featuring 512Mb of RDRAM and ATi's Radeon 8500. This resulted in an overall 2D benchmark score of 5.21 and an astonishing 3DMark2001 score of 8,298 at 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour. Meanwhile, Mesh's Elite 2.2GHz R85 manages to squeeze the pennies down to £1,839 by using 512Mb of DDR memory with a GeForce3 Ti 500-based graphics card. It scored 4.90 in our 2D benchmarks and 8,440 in 3DMark2001. Against both of these systems, the Dell comes across as the poorer cousin, but at £1,482 it's also significantly cheaper.

And value is what really makes the 4400 stand out. Dell can also be applauded for ease of use and noise reduction, although there are clear limitations for power users wishing to extend beyond the on-paper specifications. As with previous Dell systems, the Dimension 4400 suffers from design over content, but with its capable performance and good value for money it's still worthy of consideration.