The Dell XPS 730 H2C ($6,629 direct) stands as Dell's highest-performing consumer PC. It comes with the usual gaming rig accoutrements: lighted windowed case, hulking chassis, overclocked quad-core processor, latest technology (like DDR3 and nVidia's newest motherboard chipset), and dual-card graphics. Since each ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 card has two GPUs on it, this is really a quad-GPU gaming leviathan. At this price level, however, only high-end gamers with deep pockets need apply (though the XPS 730 H2C is actually a little less expensive than its predecessors). It yielded some of the better gaming performance I've seen lately, but for the time being you're really buying a system with future-proofing built in.

A design facelift has refreshed the XPS 730's case from the older XPS 720 H2C (Blu-ray) model. The new front panel matches the more attractive (in my opinion) front panel of the Dell XPS 630. It blends flatter covers over the optical drive bays with the XPS 630's angular lines and ventilation mesh on the lower half of the box. A windowed side panel, with a stylized X cut out as the window, shows off the new H2C cooling system, which sits near the bottom of the case. There's a space for another graphics card, but you'll have to remove the Creative X-Fi card in order to go triple-card. That's a moot point for the Radeons, since three-way cards have yet to be supported by ATI, but you should be able to go Triple-SLI if you decide to opt for nVidia cards instead as part of a built-to-order system. The version of the XPS 730 I looked at is the launch version, available as a preconfigured system on May 1.

Inside both the XPS 730 and the XPS 630 is the LightFX 2.0 lighting system, with both flashy (front-panel) and functional (back-panel) lighting. The back-panel lighting lets you find the USB, video, and other back-panel ports under a desk or on a darkened room. Inside the case, you can see the radiator and heat exchanger for the H2C cooling system, as well as the dual ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards. Finally, the XPS 730's internals are more upgradable and tinker-friendly, since the system now uses more ATX-standard parts, such as the motherboard.

The XPS 730 isn't a "green" PC, but its 80 PLUS power supply helps ensure that the system uses power more efficiently than a similar gaming system with an older power supply. A 1-kilowatt power supply yields plenty of power for the graphics cards, hard drives, and the rest of the XPS 730's gaming components. It also comes with a standard three-prong cable rather than the workstation-like power cable in the XPS 720. But there is still no hard on/off switch on the power supply, or a reset button—unfortunate, since gamers often crash their system when trying out new drivers or other tweaks and may need the reset switch or the ability to cut all power to the system without unplugging cables. (In other words, the only way to reset the XPS 730 is to pull the plug.) Other PCs from Dell and competitors like HP and Gateway also lack these switches. This is tolerable on a mainstream box that rarely crashes, but the lack of a reset switch is inexcusable on a gaming rig.

The XPS 730 also sleeps well. It consumes only 4 watts in sleep mode and 2W while off. This still doesn't make the unit a green PC, because the XPS 730 uses 278W while idle, but that's about average for a gaming box, considering all the bells and whistles it comes with. You can't be all that energy efficient when you have three hard drives, four GPUs, a quad-core processor, and all that lighting to power. The power usage jumped to a whopping 362W when under load on the CineBench test. For kicks, I also checked the system informally while it was running the 3DMark06 demo at 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, and the power consumption was over 600 watts. That's a lot of power, but then again, you're not buying a high-end gaming PC to save money on your power bills. That's like complaining about the crappy gas mileage on your new Lamborghini Reventón.

The system's ATX motherboard uses the new nVidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset, with support for multiple graphics cards from both ATI (CrossFireX) and nVidia (SLI). There are three PCIe X16 slots on the board, two of which are filled. Right now, DX10 and mutli-GPU gaming are still a little buggy (as seen in its test results),but with the XPS 730 you'll be in a good place to move to faster and more capable graphics in the future if you're the type that upgrades frequently.

There's also space for another hard drive in the case, in addition to the dual 160GB Raptors (in a RAID 0 array) and 1TB data drive that my review unit came with. The system can also accommodate another pair of DDR3 DIMMs (the system came configured with 2GB), though you'd need to make sure they're 1,333 MHz to match the Corsair Dominator memory installed here. The system's quad-core QX9770 processor is overclocked from the stock 3.2 GHz to 3.8 GHz at the factory, making this one of the few overclocked models to come out of a major system builder.—Next: Dell XPS 730 H2C Performance Tests

Dell XPS 730 H2C Performance Tests

Gaming performance is top-notch, with the four Radeon GPUs (two on each graphics card) producing high frame-per-second scores on both Crysis and World in Conflict (WiC). The XPS 730 achieved a playable score of 66 frames per second on Crysis at 1,280-by-1,024 resolution. Likewise, its score on WiC at the same resolution was a rock-solid 77 fps. These are good, playable scores, since 60 fps is the benchmark for FPS games like Crysis, and 30 fps is considered playable for RTS games like WiC.

Things went south a bit when the system was cranked up to a higher 1,920-by-1,200 resolution with anti-aliasing (AA) and anisotropic filtering (AF) turned on for both games: 5 fps for Crysis and 22 fps for WiC. These are not playable scores, though I have yet to see a playable score for Crysis at these higher settings, and on most systems, WiC is unplayable at these resolutions as well. Strangely enough, I've seen fractionally higher scores on a couple of systems with single graphics cards (like the Falcon NorthWest FragBox 8500 and the Polywell Poly X3800), so it looks as if both games have a problem with multiple graphics cards for now. This is ironic, since multiple graphics cards are supposed to help you play games with "eye candy" like AA and AF enabled. At least that's what the graphics card manufacturers have been spouting for the past four years.

Although the system's bragging rights go away when you drop the second graphics card, for the time being I'd skip the second Radeon card when configuring the system. That is, until CryTek and EA (and ATI and nVidia) fix these games to work well with multiple GPUs. 3DMark06 shows barely any drop in performance (18,380, down from 19,968) when you increase the resolution and turn on AA and AF, so the multiple GPUs do help with older DX9 games. Heck, if you were still playing older games like Prey and Unreal Tournament 3, you'd be golden with the XPS 730 and one of Dell's 30-inch LCD panels.

The system's other benchmark test numbers were stellar, thanks to the overclocked processor, speedy memory, and hard drives. The XPS 730's scores on SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall (233 points), CineBench R10 (14,981), Windows Media Encoder (29 seconds), and PhotoShop CS3 (17 seconds) were the fastest I've seen so far in 2008. This is a blazing system, and once the high-resolution gaming issue is cleared up, it will be a barn-burner on games, too. I suppose I could say that higher-res gaming is possible if you turn off AA and AF, but again, these quality features are the reason you pay for the extra graphics horsepower, so it's a shame that (so far) they just don't work with the newest games.

Systems in the XPS 730's class are usually expensive, but because of the high-res gaming issues, the extra expense doesn't seem to be justified (yet). The current roster of DX10 games is still unrealized. Systems like the Falcon NorthWest FragBox 8500 and the Polywell Poly X3800 have only a single graphics card, yet they're able to keep up with the XPS 730 on the game grid. The XPS 730 outclasses the FragBox on the multimedia tests, but the much cheaper X3800 ($3,975, direct) is close behind. Still, the XPS 730 shows vastly better 3DMark06 scores at both resolutions, so the potential for blistering 3D performance is there. Right now, however, you can get the same performance for $2,500 to $4,000 less, so make sure you really want the XPS 730 before you pull the trigger.

So far, the promise of quad graphics is elusive. Yes, at lower resolutions and for playing older DX9 games, the Dell XPS 730 H2C is a stellar performer. But when you ramp the pain to levels where dual graphics cards start to "make sense," the performance just isn't there yet. If I decided to go ahead and buy an XPS 730 as configured here, I'd keep up with driver updates from nVidia (for the chipset) and ATI (for the graphics cards), as well as updates for Crysis and WiC. The XPS 730 holds a lot of promise, yet at this point in time there aren't many arguments for getting the latest hardware to play the latest games at the highest resolutions.

Check out the Dell XPS 730 H2C's test scores.

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