January 6th, 2006
Dell, nVidia Team for Quad SLI Power with the XPS Renegade
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Yes, that’s quad-SLI. Asus beat them to the punch with this card from late last year, but that card only had 7800 GTs. This one has 7800 GTXs.
Each card has two circuit boards and will (naturally) take up 2 slots. Each board has a 7800 GTX 512 GPU and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. The cards are custom made for Dell, and run at a slightly lower clock speed than standard 7800 GTX 512MB cards. I’m not sure about power for the cards … the Asus cards had separate external bricks, but I’m not sure about these.
The Renegade’s CPU is a dual-core Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, mode 955, overclocked from the factory to 4.26GHz! Standard hard drive configuration is two 10,000 RPM 150GB Western Digital Raptor drives. The system is cooled by the standard XPS 600 cooling system. With all thise hardware, I would have figured on an air conditioner system for the PC alone! 
Update: Legit Reviews had a quick look at this system, and I was right about the power for the cards. Just as the Asus cards, these cards need external bricks, which were, in this case, notebook power adapters providing 150W of power to each card.
We Say: Save your money now. Reports vary on availability, from Spring to first quarter (which isn’t much of a difference, really). Pricing wasn’t announced, except for Michael Dell’s comment: “It’ll cost a lot.” One thing: I wish Dell would (finally) consider using AMD CPUs. As a gamer, I would have to say that AMD is my choice for a CPU for any system I look at.
David Johnston says:
Now, instead of putting in an overclocked Pentium 4 they should put in an overclocked Athlon FX-60 which will be dual-core and out soon. Every gamer worth his or her salt knows that AMD chips completely trash Intel’s.
If you want to see what processor I’m running, take a look here: http://home.comcast.net/~gotamd/Images/2700.jpg
2.7Ghz on an Athlon X2 sure is nice
January 6th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
Michael Santo says:
You’re right about that. But Dell still resists using AMD CPUs.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Mark says:
I’m sure Dell’s decision to use intel is because of some kind of business deal(or threat) on the part of intel. But if they gave buyers the choice of using Amd and Ati as processor and graphics, or some combination, then they would be doing a lot more business in gaming circles. Anyone who pays attention knows that Amd and Ati are just as good or better than Intel and Nvidia.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Doug Felteau says:
Just a note… while going through Dell’s booth I got the cold shoulder when I asked when AMD might make their way in Dell’s. That’s an interview ending question apparently!
BTW, in the booth right next to Nvidia, ATI setup shop with a plexi see-through case with their Crossfire product. Absolutely everything in that box was available now unlike the Dell system.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Aidle says:
Multi processor usage has been here since the Cray Super Computer with using more than a dozen 386 CPU working together.
Now most electronic company like Intel, AMD, Nvidia are doing,
even in harddrive interface too.
Looking at the power requirement for this card, I wonder the case power unit size able to coup. I guest Nvidia should build the power sockets for the graphic card from the outside rather than inside.
Anyway this is just the biginning, looking at the price is really very very expensive rigs….
January 12th, 2006 at 2:08 am