dell-xps posts

Paying even $100 for a stand alone PC network card seems pretty excessive but the folks at Bigfoot Networks have been selling their Killer NIC cards as stand alone products for over $200 since 2006. These cards have on-board technology that can actually reduce Internet latency and improve frame rates for games while playing them online.

Now Dell has decided to give their customers an easy way to get a Killer NIC card by offering one as an option on their gaming-themed XPS PCs. The company started offering the "budget" K1 version of the card on their XPS 730 and 630 PCs for a mere $149. Dell's blog site has a quick Q&A with Bigfoot Networks' Sean McCann who gives the lowdown on the benefits of including such an expensive part in the PC.

The folks at Dell have been selling their XPS line of PCs for some time and while the line has branched out from its initial gaming PC line-up to include laptops and even all-in-one PCs, the company hasn't forgotten about hardcore PC gamers. The company just announced their new XPS 730 and XPS 730 H2C models. As you can see from the image above the new model comes in a new case design that is a refinement from the previous 720 model.

The new models both come with an Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset that can support Nvidia SLI graphics cards or an ATI CrossfireX set up with Intel Core2 Extreme processors (with optional overclocking) and support for up to four hard drives. The 730 H2C model (the one with the ultra-cooling hardware) has some improvements from the 720 H2C version with an additional coldplate for the chip set, a separate fan for the CPU's voltage regulator components and a redesigned the CPU coldplate tor more uniform cooling for the PCs's four CPU cores. The H2C models comes in Victory Red and Stealth Blue colors (with 2.4mm anodized aluminum cases) while the regular 730 model comes in a brushed aluminum Silver case.

The regular Dell XPS 730 starts at $3,999 while the H2C model starts its pricing at a whopping $4,999. With those prices, Dell claims you will be able to play Crysis at 1920x1200 resolution at over 30 frames a second. If you got the cash you might want to give these a look-see.