$4000 DELL < $675 Homebuilt !?!!

[finalcutjoe]

i'm having a really hard time believing dells are really as bad as the performance numbers look...

DELL Precision 370 Workstation
P4/3.6, 4G RAM, SATA system drive, NVIDIA QUADRO FX3400

running 3Dmark06 gives me a score of 1901! WEAK

just threw together an MSI 915PL Neo-V, P4/2.6 503, 1G DDR, GEFORCE 6800 for less than $700
3Dmark06 = 2403

that's not OC'd yet, either.. could probably hike that number up 100-200 points

what gives?

I mean, I knew buying a DELL means paying for useless phone support, but this is ridiculous!

BTW- the Dell is my office CAD workstation that the IT manager raved about... even though i strenuously recommended getting something, ANYTHING else.

 

[Lead_Head]

ITS A WORKSTATION VIDEO CARD! WORKSTATION CARDS DONT WORK WELL IN 3D MARK or any game for that matter. Thats why the 6800 pwns it

 

[EllisD420]

Yea man, you gotta realize that quadro FX cards arent meant for gaming, hence the low 3dmark score. Run some sisoft sandra benchmarks if you really want to see that thing fly.

 

[Eviltwin17]

ya the quadro is not for gaming, if you want a serious high end card replace that quadro with a 7800gt oc or a gtx 512. though you can build a much better system for $1200

get an amd x2 4200+ - 380
asus a8n mobo -100
200 gig hdd - 80
2 gig ram - 160
geforce 7800gt - 300

total = $1020

just use old cd rom drives and other struff like that and you got ourself a very nice computer for relatively cheap

 

[mr_fnord]

DUDE! I just built a $150K DELL and IT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A VIDEO CARD! What a ripoff!!!!!!!

Heres the stats:

4x dual core Xeon 3Ghz 2x2MB cache
64GB DDR2 400 RAM
4x 300GB 10K SCSI drives
4x 1000Mbit Fiber NICs

Fibre channel external storage:
Dual Processor
12x 250GB 7.2K SATA drives


My P133 with a VOODOO KILLS THE brand new DELL on ALL THE GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!

Who would waste their money buying a piece of JUNK like that DELL? Apart from the 4.2 TB of high speed storage, redundant everything, and enough processing power to replace EvilTwin17's brain, it doesn't have ANYTHING USEFUL, just a bunch of PREINSTALLED CRAP!

 

[Lead_Head]

You are a dipshit if you payed 150k for that. Even dell doesnt over price stuff that much.

 

[dvdpiddy]

well did you remember that its an intel and that dell sucks at everything they do!

 

[finalcutjoe]

i'm having a really hard time believing dells are really as bad as the performance numbers look...

DELL Precision 370 Workstation
P4/3.6, 4G RAM, SATA system drive, NVIDIA QUADRO FX3400

running 3Dmark06 gives me a score of 1901! WEAK

just threw together an MSI 915PL Neo-V, P4/2.6 503, 1G DDR, GEFORCE 6800 for less than $700
3Dmark06 = 2403

that's not OC'd yet, either.. could probably hike that number up 100-200 points

what gives?

I mean, I knew buying a DELL means paying for useless phone support, but this is ridiculous!

BTW- the Dell is my office CAD workstation that the IT manager raved about... even though i strenuously recommended getting something, ANYTHING else.

lemme qualify-

the $675 includes 500PS, 10k SATA/150 system drive, ANTEC case, aux fans, rounded cables, and 17" LCD

btw- i'm hearing more and more horror stories about poor chumps who've bought Dells- no customer support, wasted hours in phone hell, fried systems, etc....

 

[finalcutjoe]

ya the quadro is not for gaming, if you want a serious high end card replace that quadro with a 7800gt oc or a gtx 512. though you can build a much better system for $1200

get an amd x2 4200+ - 380
asus a8n mobo -100
200 gig hdd - 80
2 gig ram - 160
geforce 7800gt - 300

total = $1020

just use old cd rom drives and other struff like that and you got ourself a very nice computer for relatively cheap

i understand the AMD is choice for gamers, OC'ers... however, in addition to playing HL2, i use my setup for CADD and visualization apps like AutoCAD and Lightwave, which seem to favor the intel's (in everything but raytracing/radiosity)

here's what i don't get- i understand the QUADRO's a workstation card, and 3Dmark06 is slanted toward performance with regards to games
BUT
there is NO DIFFERENCE in performance between the DELL and my MSI/GEFORCE when using AutoCAD, Microstation, Lightwave, 3DStudio, etc... (some CPU based functions like rendering or scripting are just barely noticbly faster on the DELL, but thats it)
I mean I would expect the Dell/quadro to rip when i'm 'orbiting' or other display interactivity- but there isn't any improvement over the MSI/GeFORCE

(yeah, i've got the latest and greatest BIOS, drivers on both)

 

[Lead_Head]

It may be a quadro, but its still an FX, FXs blow

 

[Anoobis]

All the Quadros have a FX designation, not to be confused with the old FX Series of mainstream products.

dvdpiddy, I think your some sort of new forum thread virus created by AMD. Your posts are growing at an exponential rate!!! :lol:

 

[darkrider]

OK - just for fun - take that 6800 from your home computer and put it in that "p.o.s." Dell and then try 3DMark06. What will surprise you is that with that configuration, you will totally destroy the score you got with your home machine.

The issue you are having is a video card issue, not a PC maker issue. Quadro cards are geared for workstations, not games. GeForce cards are made for games, not graphics apps. It's like saying that your Ferrari sucks at being a tractor or that your tractor sucks as a race car.

-darkrider

 

[finalcutjoe]

OK - just for fun - take that 6800 from your home computer and put it in that "p.o.s." Dell and then try 3DMark06. What will surprise you is that with that configuration, you will totally destroy the score you got with your home machine.

The issue you are having is a video card issue, not a PC maker issue. Quadro cards are geared for workstations, not games. GeForce cards are made for games, not graphics apps. It's like saying that your Ferrari sucks at being a tractor or that your tractor sucks as a race car.

-darkrider

you must have missed my post (msg. 9) above... read it.

and to couch it in your analogy, it's more like my tractor performing just as well as my ferrari race car (AND the tractor combines the wheat to boot)....

the QUADRO FX3400 has lousy gamer stats, good CADD performance.
the GeFORCE 6800 GS has great gamer stats, good CADD performance.

i think what i'm getting at is this- IMH(non-technical)O
there's no point in buying a +$3000 "workstation" card
or even a $$$ pre-fab system, for that matter

 

[darkrider]

Well, maybe I should ask what are you drawing in CADD? I use a 6600GT on my CADD machine at work (Precision 370 that I sometimes game on) and a 7800GTX on my machine at home (Home built). I rarely work with any 3D objects at home or work. I draw 99% 2D stuff, and the 1% of 3D is just for fun. If you draw multiple, shaded, moving 3D objects in CADD, your Quadro should do better than your 6800. 3DMark06 is a gaming benchmark. The Quadro is not a gaming card.

From an IT/business P.O.V., the Dell machines have saved my company tons of money. 3 years ago all of our machines were hand built machines. We were constantly dealing with incompatibility issues and miscellaneous hardware failures. My boss came to me and said that the company was planning on buying like machines for everyone. I told him Dell....please buy Dells. He did. In 3 years we have had one HDD fail and on PSU die. That's it. Dell Precision workstations are great and reliable machines. All of our machines run 24/7/365. Dell builds good machines.

 

[finalcutjoe]

OK - just for fun - take that 6800 from your home computer and put it in that "p.o.s." Dell and then try 3DMark06. What will surprise you is that with that configuration, you will totally destroy the score you got with your home machine.

The issue you are having is a video card issue, not a PC maker issue. Quadro cards are geared for workstations, not games. GeForce cards are made for games, not graphics apps. It's like saying that your Ferrari sucks at being a tractor or that your tractor sucks as a race car.

-darkrider

furthermore....plugin the 6800 into the Dell wouldn't show much difference at all! 3Dmark06 heavily favors the GPU, and the P4/3.6 doesn't have much on the P4/2.6 Prescott, anyhow :roll:

 

[darkrider]

Actually, I think it would increase your score more than you are thinking. You would have 1GHz extra on CPU and 3GB more RAM. I think that if you read reviews here on THG and other places on the net, PC's today are CPU limited and not as much GPU limited. Everywhere I have read, FPS in games have CPU bottlenecks, not GPU bottlenecks. Following that train of though, and boost in CPU performance would show measurable gain in FPS performance.

 

[finalcutjoe]

Well, maybe I should ask what are you drawing in CADD? I use a 6600GT on my CADD machine at work (Precision 370 that I sometimes game on) and a 7800GTX on my machine at home (Home built). I rarely work with any 3D objects at home or work. I draw 99% 2D stuff, and the 1% of 3D is just for fun. If you draw multiple, shaded, moving 3D objects in CADD, your Quadro should do better than your 6800. 3DMark06 is a gaming benchmark. The Quadro is not a gaming card.

From an IT/business P.O.V., the Dell machines have saved my company tons of money. 3 years ago all of our machines were hand built machines. We were constantly dealing with incompatibility issues and miscellaneous hardware failures. My boss came to me and said that the company was planning on buying like machines for everyone. I told him Dell....please buy Dells. He did. In 3 years we have had one HDD fail and on PSU die. That's it. Dell Precision workstations are great and reliable machines. All of our machines run 24/7/365. Dell builds good machines.

it's more likely Dell gives the big company's more attention, over the home or small business user- for obvious reasons

so i can see your point, from a management POV. IT departments can spend alot of time/$$$ running around maintaining machines, so shifting the overhead to companys like Dell, IBM, Toshiba could save big.

all i'm saying is, it seems the bang for the buck isn't there.

btw- 99% of my work is pure 3D, intelligent modeling, surface, solids, and rendering.

 

[darkrider]

it's more likely Dell gives the big company's more attention, over the home or small business user- for obvious reasons

so i can see your point, from a management POV. IT departments can spend alot of time/$$$ running around maintaining machines, so shifting the overhead to companys like Dell, IBM, Toshiba could save big.

all i'm saying is, it seems the bang for the buck isn't there.

btw- 99% of my work is pure 3D, intelligent modeling, surface, solids, and rendering.

You are 100% correct there - but buying pre-built machines has never been about bang for your buck.

 

[mr_fnord]

There is no point in an individual user buying an expensive pre-built box when all they want is a fancy video card.

Precision workstations and Optiplex desktops from Dell, like equivalents from other manufacturers, provide a featureset that is generally geared toward corporations that want to manage 1000's of machines at a time, and want consistency and reliability as much as performance. One major feature of Precisions and Opti's is that they will be available in specific configurations for years. When a corporation buys 80 every month they don't need to worry about figuring out which rev of which driver will work on this machine, and when a company designs a new image they can test it against 2 or 3 configurations and know that it will work on the 25,000 PCs in the company. All large manufacturers offer tons of upgrade (software and warranteed add in cards, not 2-2-2-4 RAM or some other enthusiast upgrade) path support if you're a large customer and willing to pay for it.

As for the crappy video card performance, it hardly Dell's fault you chose that card. With the Quadro family, like most 'professional' video cards, you are paying for a card that is 100% designed to the newest OpenGL specs, and for that 'professional' label. Since 1997, after the VooDoo came out, 'professional' video cards have been fighting a losing battle to keep up with game cards in performance. High design, testing and certification costs for a small market share doom pro cards to being way overpriced compared to game cards. A pro card will be guaranteed to work with the software that it is designed for, though. Game cards might or might not be completely spec compliant, might or might not have drivers that will work with professional design softwares.

caveat emptor

 

[mr_fnord]

:twisted: :twisted: AMD IS THE GREAT SATAN! :twisted: :twisted:

My hands shall not touch any device powered by DEMON ELECTRICITY!!!!

 

[moparman390]

Precision workstations and Optiplex desktops from Dell, like equivalents from other manufacturers, provide a featureset that is generally geared toward corporations that want to manage 1000's of machines at a time, and want consistency and reliability as much as performance. One major feature of Precisions and Opti's is that they will be available in specific configurations for years. When a corporation buys 80 every month they don't need to worry about figuring out which rev of which driver will work on this machine, and when a company designs a new image they can test it against 2 or 3 configurations and know that it will work on the 25,000 PCs in the company. All large manufacturers offer tons of upgrade (software and warranteed add in cards, not 2-2-2-4 RAM or some other enthusiast upgrade) path support if you're a large customer and willing to pay for it.

Exactly. For home use, I don't like Dell, I want to build my own with the parts I want. For business I always use Dell for clients and if I was a big corporate IT guy I would want Dells as well, all for the reasons listed above.

I'm sure if you started doing some serious, heavy duty, CAD or OpenGL stuff that Quadro would power through it where your GeForce could not.

 

[parlee]

well i was gonna consider argueing because 64gb of memory can be expensive but ur right even if it was 1k a gig its stil lanotehr 100k to the 150k bargin bin price they charge for that... but then again 64gb of memory.... just say that out loud and try to not get a boner...

 

[mr_fnord]

The box istelf was only 120K. Adding the SAN, Fibre channel, and a few extra cables bumped it to 150. The RAM was actually right at 1K/Gig (+57K to go from 4G to 64G), but that includes the multibank RAM RAID support, which might cost extra. You could trim down some of the software, drop the redundant NICs, Fibre channel controllers, and second PERC, but you'd just be limiting yourself when it came to future expansion...

That also is the cheapo single bank SATA SAN. Dell doesn't let you configure SCSI or multibank SANs on the website.

 

[parlee]

im saying 50k for memory is a bit steep... id gladly pay 2k for 60gb of memory in my computer but 50k... il take a bmw instead ... and for a 150k server... go ahead and toss me a nice porshe and maybe a bmw 3 series as well ... id take that over a server anyday..

 

[Heyyou27]

i think what i'm getting at is this- IMH(non-technical)O
there's no point in buying a +$3000 "workstation" card
or even a $$$ pre-fab system, for that matter

If you payed 3000$+ for a Quadro FX3400, you did get ripped off. Even the Quadro FX 4500s don't price that high.