I think I can help you, i just received my Dell Precision T7400 in the past week!
mosquitooth said:
- Is it possible to use a mainstream graphics card (like nvidia 9800GX2) in this workstation? Could I get such a configuration directly from DELL or do I need to exchange the cards myself?
The T7400 has 2x PCI-e x16 slots so you are ok here. You would have to add this yourself though as I think Dell can only configure you a system with Quadro graphics. One point to note is that the T7400 case is HUGE, it has the most space I have ever seen in a desktop/workstation case by far, and comes with graphics card centre and end supports which would be useful for massive cards.
mosquitooth said:
- Is it possible to add a second CPU afterwards? Or does the first CPU need to be special in a way to support this?
The T7400 motherboard has an Intel 5400 chipset, this means you get 2x socket 771s. You could purchase any Xeon with the system now and as long as the second is the same you can pop another straight in with a second cooler, with maybe a setting in the bios to change to enable 2 CPUs?
mosquitooth said:
- I'm quite impressed by the DELL XPS line: quality of assembling and noise reduction seem to be just fine. Is this the same with the Precision workstations? Does anyone have some experience with this?
The quality is second to none, the case is rock solid and very quiet. The front panel is actually metal which I wasn't expecting. All cable are routed very neatly. There is a well built tunnel channeling air past the CPU sockets and then past the memory slots. I could post a few pics if you like. The only thing I would have like to see was integral dust filters like on my old HP xw8600. That thing is quite old now but it's still absolutely spotless inside.
mosquitooth said:
- General questions: Is it possible to extend this system with the usual standard components (like add HD, NICs,...)? Could I ran into any problems?
It's possible to add boards but I'm not sure what slots there is, I didn't pay too much attention to them to be honest. I know I can put my SCSI card I need in there because I saw a PCI slot, I'll check what it has later on. Ditto on SATA connectors etc.
mosquitooth said:
- Are there any limitations to the XPS line? Is the performance comparable?
Are you going to be using the system for work? I use Autodesk Autocad, Inventor and Revit and I wanted the stability and performance of Xeon + ECC memory + Quadro. Depending on what you are using it for would really determine if you want a Xeon over a Core 2 based system. How much memory will you be needing? I know my 4GB is not going to last long, the T7400 has 8x memory slots so it's easier to upgrade to great amounts. Also how many cores do you need? Can you see yourself needing 8 cores in the not too distant future? If so a Xeon system is the way to go until Nehalem, ignoring the ridiculous Skulltrail. Going off the performance I've seen so far I was definitely right to go with a CPU nudging 3GHz (E5440 2.83GHz 1333FSB quad core).
Dan