Dell refreshes its between-Inspiron-and-Alienware tower with Intel “Ivy Bridge” horsepower and SSD-enhanced storage.
Dell has given a shot of Vitamin SSD to its top-of-the-line consumer desktop.
Replacing the XPS 8300 in the slot just below the company’s Alienware hardcore gaming systems, the Dell XPS 8500 targets content creators, multimedia buffs, and moderate gamers with new Intel “Ivy Bridge” processing power; a choice of graphics cards topped by AMD’s 2GB Radeon HD 7870; standard Wi-Fi and long-overdue USB 3.0 ports; and a variety of multi-terabyte storage options, most of which team a spinning hard disk with a solid-state drive for extra-fast startup.
The $1,999 (plus monitor) flagship configuration that Dell sent to PCMag combines a 3.4-GHz Core i7-3770 quad-core, eight-thread CPU with 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory (Dell promises 32GB systems will be available later this year), the Radeon HD 7870 card, a 256GB Samsung solid-state drive C: and 3TB Seagate 7,200 rpm drive D:, and a Blu-ray burner. Other configurations of the Intel H77 “Panther Point” chipset-based desktop will pair 2GB and 3GB hard drives with either the 256GB SSD or, more affordably, a 32GB SSD using Intel Smart Response Technology for optimized drive caching. More
