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Hands On: Dell's New XPS 8500 Desktop

Dell refreshes its between-Inspiron-and-Alienware tower with Intel "Ivy Bridge" horsepower and SSD-enhanced storage.

May 1, 2012

Dell has given a shot of Vitamin SSD to its top-of-the-line consumer desktop.

Replacing the XPS 8300 in the slot just below the company's Alienware hardcore gaming systems, the Dell XPS 8500 targets content creators, multimedia buffs, and moderate gamers with new Intel "Ivy Bridge" processing power; a choice of graphics cards topped by AMD's 2GB Radeon HD 7870; standard Wi-Fi and long-overdue USB 3.0 ports; and a variety of multi-terabyte storage options, most of which team a spinning hard disk with a solid-state drive for extra-fast startup.

The $1,999 (plus monitor) flagship configuration that Dell sent to PCMag combines a 3.4-GHz Core i7-3770 quad-core, eight-thread CPU with 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory (Dell promises 32GB systems will be available later this year), the Radeon HD 7870 card, a 256GB Samsung solid-state drive C: and 3TB Seagate 7,200 rpm drive D:, and a Blu-ray burner. Other configurations of the Intel H77 "Panther Point" chipset-based desktop will pair 2GB and 3GB hard drives with either the 256GB SSD or, more affordably, a 32GB SSD using Intel Smart Response Technology for optimized drive caching.

The XPS 8500's black tower case features a clean design (replacing the front door of the XPS 8300) with two USB 3.0 ports in front and two in the back. Two USB 2.0 ports, one for charging handheld devices, and a tray to store the latter are on top. Under the hood is a 460-watt power supply that Dell says is strong enough for up to 225-watt graphics cards. The two-slots-wide Radeon card leaves just two PCIe x1 slots free on the motherboard; an 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth card occupies a Mini PCIe slot.

We haven't had time to run our full set of benchmarks on the XPS 8500, but two results stand out. One is that the system boots up in a brisk 34 seconds—as with some ultrabooks, the circling lights on the "Starting Windows" screen don't have time to finish forming the Windows logo. The other is a overall performance score of 5,458—no match for the fastest gaming desktops, but ahead of our midrange gaming Editors' Choice 5,283.

As for gaming, the Dell managed a perfectly playable 48 frames per second in our DirectX 11 test at 1,920-by-1,080 resolution with 4x antialiasing (125 fps at 1,280-by-720 with no antialiasing). It posted 74.5 fps in Unigine's Heaven 3.0 benchmark at 1,920-by-1,080.

Economy models of the XPS 8500 will be available with Intel's Core i5-3450 processor, 1TB hard drives, and tamer graphics cards including AMD's Radeon HD 7570 and Nvidia's GeForce GT 620 and 640, but we think the Core i7, especially in the configurations with 32GB solid-state drives, will hit the sweet spot as an up-to-the-minute refresh of a system that was showing its age. Stay tuned for our full review.