Dell XPS 600 Renegade
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The Dell XPS 600 Renegade, announced at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2006), is a high-powered gaming computer, an updated version of the Dell XPS 600. The computer is known as the first computer model to feature video cards in quad-SLI mode. This machine is targeted for consumers who have a high financial budget, and are looking at Alienware and Falcon Northwest machines as well. The Renegade will feature artwork by Mike Lavallee from Killer Paint to design the case.
Performance
Motherboard
The custom nForce 4 motherboard manufacturered for Dell by NVIDIA will support the massive amount of hardware packed in the XPS 600R.
Processor
Like many of the other high-performance Intel-based machines on the market today, the 600R will feature an Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition dual-core 955 chipset. Dell has announced that they will warrant the CPUs, despite them overclocking the entire CPU to 4.26 GHz.
Graphics
Dell has announced that they will equip the 600R with four custom NVIDIA 7800GTX 512MB graphics cards, as opposed to the maxium two standard cards. All four cards will be working in SLI (Scalable Link Interface) mode. Two of the cards will be directly connected to two x16 PCIe slots on the motherboard, while the remaining two will be "slaved" or connected to the two original/master cards. The clockspeed of one of the custom graphics cards is less than that of a normal 7800GTX 512MB card, however it is faster than the speed of a normal 7800GTX 256MB card.
Storage
The XPS 600 ships with a 10,000 RPM 150 GB hard drive. Two 250GB hard drives running at 7,200 RPM will also be included.
Cooling & Power
Since all of the components are expected to produce massive amounts of heat, Dell plans to give the 600R the standard cooling system taken from the 600 series. The powersupply itslelf is 650 watts and in additon each video dual video card is connected to another power supply rated at 150 watts each. The entire system needs aproximatley a whopping 950 watts of power.
Casing & Design
To support the "elite" and "exclusive" idea behind the 600R, each computer will include a "red-flaming" custom airbrush paint-job completed by Mike Lavallee. Pictures can be seen at Dell's CES 2006 website located at http://www.dell.com/ces2006.
Availability & Cost
Although no final price has been calculated, Michael Dell has responded "It'll cost a lot." Third parties and hardware websites have speculated that the price may be from $4,000 to $8,000, depending on the selected options. The XPS 600 Renegade will also be a "special limited-edition configuration that breaks the XPS mold". This can only mean that the price will be higher than the average XPS 600 line's price (when loaded with options).
Dell UltraSharp 3007 WFP
Dell demoed the 600R with the all-new 3007 WFP monitor. The monitor is said to be able to produce a resolution of 2560x1600, and play games such as Monolith's F.E.A.R at high-frame rates (see "Manufacturer Claims" below).
Manufacturer Claims
NVIDIA -On the Quad 7800GTX SLI cards: "With some anti-aliasing modes, because of all that graphics memory spread around, they achieve faster than 4x speedup over a single card."
Dell/NVIDIA -On the Dell 3007 WFP monitor connected with the XPS 600R: "The Quad SLI graphics solution can drive the 2560x1600 display at high frame rates, even with modern, graphics intensive games such as Monolith's "F.E.A.R.". The monitor can display 4.1 megapixels and has a 700:1 contrast ratio as well as a 178-degress viewing angle. It requires that the graphics card support dual-link DVI connectivity for it's top-tier output. It is expected that this monitor will be priced at $2,199.
