Dell Dimension 8200

After last year's AMD revolution in the desktop market, you have to wonder exactly what Intel-only companies like Dell can really offer any more. It's especially tough when, of the three 17in TFT-based systems vying for attention this month, the Athlon XP-based Mesh Matrix XP 2200+ Ti Pro (see p110) and Evesham Axis 2100+NK (see p111) come in at £300 and £600 cheaper respectively.

Megahertz aside, the Pentium 4 is finally having the last laugh on performance, partially aided by a faster 533MHz front side bus, denoted by the 'B' in the 2.4BGHz. Also, while the Athlon has moved to a 0.13 micron manufacturing process, it still sports only 256Kb of Level 2 cache compared to the Pentium 4's 512Kb. Dell's masterstroke, however, was to build the Dimension 8200 with 512Mb of dual-channel 400MHz RDRAM, resulting in a combined 800MHz as opposed to the Athlon systems' 333MHz.

This united front of cutting-edge technology resulted in our fastest 2D performance benchmark yet - a stunning 1.47, which even beats the 1.41 from the 2.53GHz Hi-Grade Ultis PV4 2533 PR7 (see Reviews, issue 93, p101) and leaves the Mesh and evesham.com systems trailing with 1.36 and 1.42 respectively.

Dell's choice of graphics is also a formidable challenge. At 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour, the Dimension's GeForce4 Ti 4600 managed a phenomenal 3DMark2001 score of 10,816, only dropping to 8,762 at 1,280 x 1,024. Meanwhile, the Mesh with the same graphics chip only managed 9,650 and 8,152, while the ATi Radeon 8500-based Evesham scored only 8,768 and 6,928. All scores are above and beyond current requirements, but future-proofing is further assured by the Dell's performance class.

Beyond raw performance, Dell's choice of components is a tempting prospect. The huge capacity offered by Western Digital's 120Gb WD1200JB hard disk is backed up with lightning-quick performance, displayed in this month's group test (see p89), stealing the crown for the fastest ever EIDE hard disk seen at PC Pro. With the potential for huge file sizes, it's a boon that Dell has also included a Philips DVD+RW drive for offloading up to 4.7Gb at a time, although it's worth noting that this drive doesn't support the writing of +R format discs. It can, however, burn normal CD-Rs at 12-speed and CD-RWs at ten-speed, and a separate CD-ROM also makes on-the-fly disc-to-disc copying possible.

Software support for the DVD+RW drive comes in the form of Sonic's basic MyDVD 3 package, although without support for +R format discs you lose the ability to create movies that will be widely compatible with standalone players. And, while Dell has thoughtfully provided its own branded Movie Studio software for capturing real-time DV, it's thoughtlessly omitted an IEEE-1394 adaptor for capturing the video in the first place. Once you depress the sunken buttons atop and beneath the system and swing open the hinged case, you're presented with one possible reason why.

Of the four available PCI slots, one houses the adaptor for three USB 2 ports, another is home to Turtle Beach's Santa Cruz - a good enough card, but a Sound Blaster Audigy would have provided a IEEE-1394-compatible port for DV capture. The final two slots perform communications duties with a Lucent's V.92 modem and a 3Com 10/100BaseTX Ethernet adaptor. There's only really room for two further hard disks and extra memory.

With only a fan on the GPU and a system fan ducted over the CPU's passive heatsink, the closed system case's noise levels will be unnoticeable in even the quietest office environments. However, if you're thinking the 8200 would be ideal for home cinema, you'll be sorely disappointed that Dell has only supplied a subwoofer and dual satellites in the form of Harman Kardon's HK-695 speakers, although these are excellent for basic stereo.