Hello

A customer of mine is possbily after a new PC for home, which his son uses for coursework etc, and some gaming. Games are mainly Warhammer games, Sims, that sort of thing. His current machine is Dell and they are fairly keen to stick with them. Ive looked at the Dell XPS range, and ive seen 2 possibles:

XPS 430 - Core 2 Quad Q8200, Vista Home Premium, 3Gb DDR3 1333Mhz, 640Gb HD, ATi 4850 Graphics, 3Yr Warranty £669.74
or
Studio XPS - Core i7 920, Vista Home Premium 64bit, 3Gb DDR3 Triple Channel 1066Mhz, 1Tb Hard Drive, ATi 4850 Graphics, 3Yr Warranty £782.79

I dont know anything about the Warhammer series, i know these machines will be ok to run them now but how much do the games improve, will these PCs be ok to play them for the next few years? Also, does anyone know whether you can upgrade the graphics cards in the XPS machines? And is the 4850 a decent card?

Thanks

I'm not a big Dell fan but that's not helpful so here goes -

I'd go for the i7 as it's a bit more future proof and yes you will be able to change the GPU but been warned Dell only put the minimal PSU in to handle the purchased spec so future upgrades maybe limited by this.

What size monitor is he going to use?

I'd go for the i7 as well.
I wouldn't worry too much about the PSU - as long as Dell are using standard ATX cases, a replacement PSU can be added later if needed, just warn the customer in advance.

thanks guys. He's only using a 17" TFT, so its not a major gaming system he's after, just want to make sure he can still play games like this over the next few years.

thanks

The 4850 should be enough for a 17" screen. Any bigger and you'd need to look at the 4870 maybe, but at least it won't be held back by the CPU!

For the price difference, the i7 is a no brainer. I would see if you can spec a better graphics card from factory. You usually can with Dell. For what it's worth, I'm typing this on a 30mth old XPS laptop which is still going strong, very quiet and superbly well built.

unfortunately, that is the only card they are offering. The only other spec i seem able to find is with the Q8200, 6Gb RAM, 1Tb Hard Drive, and an ATi 3870 X2, for around £835

Is that graphics card better than the 4850?

Thanks

The X2 is a slightly older card with dual GPUs. As not all games use that technology, I'd be tempted to avoid. Also, the i7 is more important for future proofing. The 4850 has newer RAM and will likely cope with a 20" wide I'd say. The sys reqs for the latest Warhammer game appear to be fairly light. But being based on the Essence engine which also runs Company of Heroes, makes me a little nervous. CoH makes light work of most graphics cards.

Still, you don't have a choice. A Dell machine will be well built. The XPS in particular have great warranties and the card is far from crap, so I say go for it.

Your be fine with the 4850 on a 17" LCD, you should be able to push the setting up at that res.

thanks guys

Re. the PSU - are Dell still using that odd shaped plug for the Mobo?
Remember trying to swap a PSU on a friends Dell only to be confounded by the plug.
Just a thought.

6gb of RAM? That's an odd amount to put in a Core2. On an i7 you'd expect it thanks to it's triple channels, but 6gb will leave you a bank down and running in single channel mode on an Q8200...or is that a typo??

not a typo, and its exactly what I thought. Its 2 x 2Gb + 2 x 1Gb - its the XPS430, 3rd one along:
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-xps-430?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs