Dell's new gaming desktop allows more hardware tweaks

Dell on Monday announced a quad-core gaming desktop that allows gamers to not only overclock the CPU, but also monitor and tweak the performance of components like fans and power supplies.
With Dell's XPS 630, an entry-level gaming desktop, gamers can ramp up system performance through the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), a communication platform that manipulates and monitors the performance of components like graphics cards and fans.

ESA is a hardware and software platform developed by a group of PC makers and component manufacturers that allows components to communicate and exchange performance information, said Bryan Del Rizzo, a spokesman at Nvidia, which supplies a graphics card for the Dell desktop. That information is then provided to users, who can control the components through the software, Del Rizzo said.

For example, users can set the performance of components like the fan and power supply to work harder when the graphics processing unit is rendering 3D graphics. If system components fail, the interface maintains a log for troubleshooting.

The platform is independent of the CPU and relates to the interdependency of system components, Del Rizzo said.

Dell is the first PC maker to support the ESA protocol, which works well with Dell's LightFX technology, Del Rizzo said. Many enthusiast-class gaming PCs have neon lighting on their chassis, and LightFX technology allows developers to sync the on-screen environment with light levels on PCs. Lights on a PC could flash to increase tension in a shooter game, for example.

Nvidia, Dell, HP, Alienware and Falcon Northwest are among the companies that support the ESA platform, which is built for the Windows Vista OS.

Dell's adoption lends credibility to the platform, said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. The technology is still brand-new and could attract attention, though it may be a while before PC makers and component manufacturers are on the same page, Peddie said.

"[ESA] is an interesting idea, it's going to be interesting to a small community of gaming enthusiasts," Peddie said. Even though the gaming community is small, it's influential in adopting new technologies, Peddie said.

At the starting price of US$1,249, the XPS 630 is powered by Intel's Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor running at 2.4GHz, 2G bytes of DDR2 memory, Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT graphics card with 512M bytes of video memory, a 320G-byte hard drive and a DVD-RW drive. It runs the Windows Vista Home Premium OS.

The system also supports ATI's Crossfire technology, which allows multiple cards to work together to scale multimedia performance, according to AMD.