Dell XPS One 27 Review: The Premium All-in-One
by Dustin Sklavos on May 29, 2012 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Dell
- Intel
- XPS
- Ivy Bridge
- Kepler
- all-in-one
- 600M
- NVIDIA
System Performance
Ivy Bridge is a very strange beast. It's been generally underwhelming for enthusiasts given the middling overclocking headroom stemming from poor thermals, though my experience with it is that you can hit roughly the same overall performance levels as Sandy Bridge at lower clocks and lower power consumption. Where Intel's new chips were born to succeed are laptops and all-in-ones, and I think Dell's XPS One is going to be a solid proof of that.
The PCMarks skew heavily towards the SSD caching technology in Dell's XPS One, but the system also features the fastest CPU and fastest graphics of any of the all-in-ones we've tested. Advances in process technology may allow the top end to edge up, but in thermally constrained spaces they can result in big, big performance gains.
Intel's Core i7-3770S allows Dell's XPS One to soundly beat last generation's top 95W processor (outside of the i7-2700K), but the 3770S chops off a third of the i7-2600's TDP. Performance is up across the board, allowing the XPS One to offer a tremendous amount of power for what's fundamentally a family appliance.
The GDDR5 on the GeForce GT 640M also allows the GPU in the XPS One to stretch its legs, delivering at least twice as much graphics performance as the last generation all-in-one from Dell. At this point I'm convinced going with anything but GDDR5 on all-in-one graphics hardware is unacceptable; either stick with the IGP or go all in. Power consumption isn't as big of an issue with all-in-ones, and the bandwidth afforded by GDDR5 is essential for providing a decent gaming experience at 1080p.
Since the other all-in-ones were benchmarked using our old gaming suite, we only have results for the Dell XPS One 2710. That said, generally speaking it has the chops to game at 1080p. I wouldn't push it to the panel's native resolution of 2560x1440, but you can still have a decent gaming experience on the XPS One. This is a massive improvement over the previous generation. And for those who might otherwise complain about not gaming at native resolution, remember that 2560x1440 on a 27" panel gives a small enough dot pitch that running non-native isn't quite as disctracting as on lesser LCDs.
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Bownce - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
The Magic Touch touchpad works very well and don't leave prints on the screen.Patanjali - Thursday, November 8, 2012 - link
There is a version WITH touchscreen.damianrobertjones - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - link
No.I like to actually change parts without alarms going off within the machine.
scottwilkins - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
These guys with no clue what good engineering is, and buy Macs? What an idiot.Pc2u - Saturday, September 8, 2012 - link
Done that, there to slow, dell xps have much better spec much faster and it's designed for windows unlike the mac, no boot amp crud to deal with, updates etc.I've got 2 iMacs 27, the only reason I got em was for the resolution, now I can get my hands on a pc all in one with the same screen that's designed for windows (a far better system for an easier, quicker and logical execution for most things) happys days, the iMacs will soon be on eBay, don't like apple never have, some of there products are amazing, but I don't like there policies or OS
Look out dell here I come
cfujii - Monday, September 16, 2013 - link
Well, Dell fixed the heat issue. I have a Windows 8 version of the XPS One 2710 and it has a great touch screen. It comes with a bluetooth mouse and keyboard (which I replaced with a PCKeyboard unit). The temps are all down from the review. The fans are running about 1200rpm. I got this package for photo editing using Photoshop CS6 and it works great!I wouldn't buy a Mac because my background is in IT and the company I just retired from is running Dell. It's been doing well for us so that's why I went to Costco and got the XPS One 2710 for $1600. The new version of the XPS One will have the Haswell processor and the 650M GPU. I was going to wait for the Haswell version but Costco offered $200 off because they are replacing the model I bought with the Haswell version.
Blibbax - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
It's worth noting that you could game at exactly half resolution (720p) on this screen and avoid any of the normal issues of LCD scaling.Blibbax - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Well, I suppose it's 1/4 resolution really, but you get the idea. Each pixel rendered would be exactly 4 pixels on the panel.guidryp - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Not really. I tried this on my 30" 2560x1600 screen.It looks better scaled to 1920x1200 than it does to exactly half (1280x800).
Apple gets away with this trick because they keep the same size screen and cram in 4 times as many pixels that are too tiny to see.
Penti - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
GPU-scaling or the hardware scaling of the screen? Normally I guess you do it on the GPU now days.