XPS 435 Owners Thread

Waiting for my 435T to arrive.  Order 4/4/09.  Estimated ship date at that time was 4/17, so, we'll see.  I ordered it with the ATI 4670 512MB VideoCard.  I don't use it for gaming much, so decided the 4850/4870 was probably overkill.  My question is, should I hook up the monitor (Dell SX2210) via DVI or HDMI?

[quote user="s.myrr"] I purchased the OCZ Ram - recommended by some forum members.  I'm not sure if I willl swap out the 3 gigs for the 6, or just add them together...   Does anyone know if this system comes with a retail vista disc, or is it some sort of proprietary restore disc?  My first mission will be to drop the velociraptor in there......

Well - it comes with a Dell OEM disc (i.e. the OS is tied to the PC).

That being said - yes - (from personal experience) - you can re-install, from scratch, the Vista OS in "retail" fashion (i.e. base install).  You'll then need to re-install all the appropriate Dell Drivers, etc. provided with the PC as well (or download them from the support site).

I'm currently running a dual-boot scenario - With the re-installed Vista partition and a Windows 7 beta/RC partition.  I actually *like* the Windows 7 (will definitely be upgrading to the final release when it's available) so much that I rarely boot into the Vista partition - but it's there in case I *need* it.  

One of the things I've been impressed with most on this system is the actual minimalistic approach to the junkware that you find on a "typical" new PC - Simply put - Dell installed the OS, Virus Software, Drivers, and a "Dell Dock" application - that's it.  Quite honestly the cleanest installations I've come across in quite a long time. 

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Nice - less bloat = better!  I don't know too much about windows 7, but i'm going to definately check it out.  Sounds like it will be easy to reinstall with a new HD.

Thanks for this - I will give 9gb a shot.  I figure there must be a ram sweet-spot...

Thanks for the links!

Hi All,

I got new 435t delivered on Friday, l have to say it seems slow and unstable. I'm getting a lot of lock ups, and when l'm trying to run vmware bsod's.

Does anyone else find it slow? I'm using 3GB memory at the moment - l am going to purchase another 6GB off newegg once l'm happy with the system.

It's running bios version A07.

My old PC was home built and is now 5 years old, in that time l never had a BSOD, the only reason l replaced it was for the more processing power for my vmware testing.

I'm impressed by the quick turn around time from Dell on the build/delivery (even though they lost my monitor), but the machine itself seems to be slow and unreliable.

Anyone else had any issues?

I got new 435t delivered on Friday, l have to say it seems slow and unstable. I'm getting a lot of lock ups, and when l'm trying to run vmware bsod's.

I just got my Studio XPS MT on Friday and installed my Media apps (Photoshop CS4,  Pinnacle Studei 12, Express Burn & RIP) and they run just fine. I can barely hear the fan which is nice after some many had problems with a noisy fan. After being on for most of a day the computer was not even warm.  Performance of Photoshop and Pinnacle Studio are  oustanding (compared to the Dell E510 dual core I have),

The only issue I have, is during boot,  prior to seeing any signs of the Dell logo or Microsoft, the system sits with a blackscreen for about 2 minutes with no signs of life.  Once I get the Vista login every loads real fast (I used MSCONFIG to pair down to only what I needed tio be loaded).  During tests I removed all external connections (ex. USB devices) and still had the delay.  Anyone else having the system sit for quite a while with no signs of life?

Studio XPS MT, i7-920, ATI Radeon HD 4850, 6GB DDR3 SDRAM, 740GB drive

Placed my order on a new 435T last week, expect ship date is 05/01/09. Glad to see a forum about performance and tech questions not just late delivery complaints. My primary use is media, gaming.I went pretty basic with RAM and videocard, seemed cheaper to upgrade myself. I plan to upgrade to the  4870 1GB VD card but when i check on newegg and nicx there are like 4 different models can anyone steer me in the right direction on which model ? Also should i upgrade the RAM if i upgraade my videocard ? Thanks

STUDIO XPS 435T

I7-920(2.66GHZ)

ATI RADEON HD 4670

DELL S2409W monitor

1TB SERIAL ATA 2, 7200 RPM

Straight out of the box all that was performed was a vmware workstation installation.

I've removed vmware and l'm still getting the lock ups.

I decided to go with 3GB Ram only because l am going to purchase the additional from Newegg as it's a lot cheaper than DELL.

The HDD is a Western Digital 500GB Sata 7200rpm, and the video card is the Radeon 4670 512MB. 

What Bios version are you running?

I've run stress tests and memory tests on it - it passes them all, although l stopped one of the stress tests as the cpu temp got up into the 80's.

Another couple of things l want to ask the other 435T Owners.

Does your network card take some time to intialize and actually get an IP Address? (It seems slow even without Mcafee or any other AV software installed)

For those owners that choose Mcafee did you find it slowed down the system startup by a lot. (I've always been a Mcafee user - mainly as l have had to manage the Central EPO Mcafee servers at work, l've always used Enterprise currently v8.5i) The version that Dell supply seems to really delay Vista - and especially the network card.

Looks like l've rectified the problems l was having with the slowness and slow nic issues.  I ran a memtestx86 on it last night and it all passed, so l ended up reformatting it, and using the drivers from the manufacturers website for the Intel Chipset, NIC and the ATI Radeon.

Looks like l've rectified the problems l was having with the slowness and slow nic issues.

I ran a memtestx86 on it last night and it all passed, so l ended up reformatting it, and using the drivers from the manufacturers website for the Intel Chipset, NIC and the ATI Radeon.

Since l've done that it all seems a lot faster and no bsod. VMware runs fine now to

I'll be ordering my extra memory for it now.

On the virus front l decided not to put Mcafee back on, l went with AVG instead as the newer products from Symantec and Mcafee seem to try and be a bit to clever these days and they put more load on system resources.

Yeah l'm glad it's now up and running, l'm used to building my own, l should have wiped the o/s from the start :)

Looking into memory now, any you recommend? I've looked on other posts of this forum and the ocz memory seems to have gone up quite a bit.

Newegg are doing a deal on 6GB DDR3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148246

Last thing l want are memory incompability issues, l know the supplied memory is 8500 running at 1033Mhz. 

Or there's this one recommended from another post on the forums: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227375

Obviously the OCZ one above can run at a higher speed - if/when Dell release the update for this.

I've read that there has been some issues with the Crucial memory on certain Dells.

Any suggestions?

Last thing l want are memory incompability issues, l know the supplied memory is 8500 running at 1033Mhz. .  Or there's this one recommended from another post on the forums: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227375

The only issue I have, is during boot,  prior to seeing any signs of the Dell logo or Microsoft, the system sits with a blackscreen for about 2 minutes with no signs of life.  Once I get the Vista login every loads real fast (I used MSCONFIG to pair down to only what I needed tio be loaded).  During tests I removed all external connections (ex. USB devices) and still had the delay.  Anyone else having the system sit for quite a while with no signs of life?