New Quad-core iMac versus Dell XPS

[phpscott]

I am planning on buying a new system soon so I did some shopping around. I use Windows a lot as I am a desktop application programmer and that is my target OS. I prefer Mac OS X for everything else and why my last two computers have been macs. Since I earn my living when using Windows, I considered purchasing a Dell, or another brand, if the price was right. I customized the Dell XPS 8000 with the specs. below and was a little surprised when I saw the final cost.

Total Cost (excluding shipping): $2312.00

The XPS 8000 has a Blu-ray drive but the iMac has bluetooth and iSight. The monitor is $929. I could have selected a cheaper 27in. monitor, but I cannot stand TN monitors and the comparison with the iMac would not have been as close as possible. The 2709W monitor is a VA monitor if anyone is wondering.

After seeing the minor cost difference, I will be getting the iMac. I will be losing the ability to change hardware in the future but in the past, I rarely changed hardware before getting a new computer anyway.

Just thought I'd share.

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Studio XPS 8000

Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English

Studio XPS 8000, Intel® Core™ i7-860 processor(8MB Cache, 2.80GHz)

Memory 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 4 DIMMs

Keyboard Dell Wireless Desktop Keyboard & Mouse

Monitor Dell 2709W 27 inch UltraSharp Widescreen Digital Flat Panel

Video Card 1024MB nVidia GeForce GT220

Hard Drives 1TB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache

Mouse Mouse included with Keyboard purchase

Optical Drive Dual Drives: Blu-ray Disc (BD) Combo (BD-ROM; DVD/CD Burner) and DVD+/-RW

Sound Soundblaster X-Fi MB – Software Enabled

Speakers Dell AX210 Stereo Speakers

Wireless Dell 1505 WLAN PCIe card with11n mini-Card & external antenna

[OCBulldogs]

Wow! I did the exact same comparison! Great minds think alike...

My only hesitation is th video card. The Dell system's card is MUCH more powerful than the laptop card in the iMac.

Guys any thoughts?

The only game that I play is WoW.

[phpscott]

I only game on my XBox 360 so the video card is not a concern in my case. I am interested though what others have to say. I just finished ordering the iMac.

Originally Posted by OCBulldogs

Wow! I did the exact same comparison! Great minds think alike...

My only hesitation is th video card. The Dell system's card is MUCH more powerful than the laptop card in the iMac.

Guys any thoughts?

The only game that I play is WoW.

[richprice79]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone : Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

It's kind of funny that so many ask will a 2009 computer run a 2004 game?

[Maven1975]

I would wait to see about the 4850. Now that the inside of the iMac has been redesigned, it just might be a 4850 and not a 4850m. They did manage to put a desktop CPU inside.

Also, you have to wonder if the GPU is the reason for the hold up on the Quad shipments, why wouldn't they just use the 4850m's they were using in the last revision. Looking at the GPU upgrade price, I think its $50 more than last revision to boot.

Otherwise, it truly is the Quad chips holding things back.

And yes, the other card is still faster.

[phpscott]

After some research, I changed my order to the i5. The speed difference is very small, and I will want a new computer 2-3 years from now anyway.