Dell XPS 700 - reviewed, dissected

Adobe PhotoShop Elements 4.0:

For our Photoshop Elements test, we used a selection of 400 3MP photographs taken in a variety of surroundings using the batch file processing function in the Elements Editor. We performed all of the auto fixes, including Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour and Sharpen before resizing the image to 640x480 and saving as a high quality JPEG.

The Dell system was the slowest of the two here, being outpaced by the reference system despite having the same chip at the core.

Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multithreaded version of the Xvid codec, along with the LAME MT MP3 encoder for encoding audio. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.

Here, the Dell system proves itself faster than our top-spec Athlon, although it is still unable to keep up with our uber-reference rig.