Questions about Dell XPS machines

Hey folks,

I'm in the market for a new machine for editing with LR4, PSE 11 and CS2 (plus plug-ins and whatever else the future brings). Basically, no gaming, just photo editing. My current machine is way too slow and I'm looking for something that will last at least a few years.

Dell (in Canada) has deals on a couple of XPS machines:

Deal #1:
$1299
- XPS 8500 Special Edition i7-3770
- 24GB DDR3
- 2TB + 256SSD
- AMD Radeon HD 7770

Deal #2:
$849
- XPS 8500 i7-3770
- 16GB DDR3
- 1TB
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 1GB GDDR5

Are the upgrades in Deal #1 worth the extra cash?

I've never owned Dell, but they seem to get decent reviews. I'm in the "non-builder" camp when it comes to PC's... just no interest to build my own. How do these XPS systems rate as far as running photo software go? Does Dell load them up with a bunch of useless programs? I had an HP system years ago it came with pre-installed crap like 'HP Image loader' and 'HP movie maker' or whatever it was called.

I'd go #2.
16Gb ram is great,.
The 1TB vs 2TB also wouldn't interest me, as I like multiple hard drives over one big one.

So #2 and some more hard drives

JoseCanseco wrote in post #15928019
Hey folks,

I'm in the market for a new machine for editing with LR4, PSE 11 and CS2 (plus plug-ins and whatever else the future brings). Basically, no gaming, just photo editing. My current machine is way too slow and I'm looking for something that will last at least a few years.

Dell (in Canada) has deals on a couple of XPS machines:

Deal #1:
$1299
- XPS 8500 Special Edition i7-3770
- 24GB DDR3
- 2TB + 256SSD
- AMD Radeon HD 7770

Deal #2:
$849
- XPS 8500 i7-3770
- 16GB DDR3
- 1TB
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 1GB GDDR5

Are the upgrades in Deal #1 worth the extra cash?

I've never owned Dell, but they seem to get decent reviews. I'm in the "non-builder" camp when it comes to PC's... just no interest to build my own. How do these XPS systems rate as far as running photo software go? Does Dell load them up with a bunch of useless programs? I had an HP system years ago it came with pre-installed crap like 'HP Image loader' and 'HP movie maker' or whatever it was called.

In my opinion, the extra $400 is not worth shelling out for the better video card, obscene amount of ram, and extra storage. If anything, use the money you saved and install an SSD as your OS/Programs drive and store everything else on the already spacious 1TB drive.

If you're also doing video editing, I would still choose the cheaper xps, since it comes with a GeForce video card with CUDA cores, allowing you to really speed up encoding times. I have 16GB of DDR3 as well, and even when exporting h264 files, I never use more than 10GB of the ram.

Another thing is if you're completely sure that you're not going to be doing any video editing, you would save some more moolah by going down to an i5 3570 and experience almost no impact in photo export times.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the responses guys, maybe I'll have a look around at i5/16GB machines to save a few bucks.

What's the difference between all the different i5 models as far as photo editing goes? Is the 3570 best?

JoseCanseco wrote in post #15931271
Thanks for the responses guys, maybe I'll have a look around at i5/16GB machines to save a few bucks.

What's the difference between all the different i5 models as far as photo editing goes? Is the 3570 best?

http://www.xbitlabs.co​m …core-i5-ivy-bridge_8.html

I'll leave this one up to your own judgement. In the end, more money, diminished returns, but you do shave a few seconds off of editing a photo. Whether that's worth the extra expense moving up to the next best processor is your call to make

Edit: Don't worry if you end up picking up a 3570 or 3770 without the K designation (3570k or 3770k), it only means theyou won't be able to freely overclock the processor. Otherwise, they're the same processors with the same performance at stock.

Cheers

JoseCanseco wrote in post #15931271
What's the difference between all the different i5 models as far as photo editing goes? Is the 3570 best?

Faster speed CPU will get things done faster and i5 3570 is the best bang for the buck for photo editing and gaming. The i7 3770 is slightly better for video editing and such. But for the price difference it's not really worth buying for a 10-15% performance gain in limited applications. Plus you can overclock the 3570k to over 4Ghz without even upgrading the stock Intel cooling and get near the performance of the 3770.

I own and use #1 for LR 4 and it's a great combo of features. The only change I made to your #1 list is that I bumped up the RAM to 32gb and also added a DELL U3011 monitor.

LR is very quick with the i7 3770 processor. LR imports 25 files in 15 sec and loads full res previews instantly. My catalog has about 750 images which is pretty small. A 256gb SSD is a must with LR 4. If your other choices don't include this size of SSD, then that alone would be a deal breaker for me.

If you have the extra cash, I highly recommend #1.

If you want bang for buck get an i5, 16GB RAM, and an SSD for OS/programs/cache. I have two SSDs, one for OS and programs (60GB, half full, W7-64 with lots of software but not swap file), one for cache and some data (120GB, 1/3 used).

Thanks again for the responses folks, much appreciated. I'm going to have to wait for some i5 deals to come around... the car needs new brakes and the A/C just went on the fritz. Why must life get in the way of all my fun?? I was tinkering around with LR4 last night and holy cow it's getting slow.