Dell announces XPS Gen 5 desktop with dual-core Pentium EE

Round Rock (TX) - Dell jumped into the dual-core announcement competition and said it will launch an enthusiast PC equipped with a dual-core Pentium 4 Extreme Edition for $3000 "soon". The company also will offer its Precision 380 workstation with the dual-core chip.

Intel had the Dimension XPS Gen 5 already on display at its spring developer forum gave some of the systems away in a raffle. Dell is now following with the official announcement of the PC that will be available in the coming weeks. There are few surprises, as the device follows Intel’s platform specs.

The new XPS will integrate a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 840 processor (3.2 GHz), based on the Smithfield dual-core of the Pentium D. The processor has an 800 MHz front side bus, 2 x 1 MByte L2 cache and supports Hyperthreading. The system is based on the 955X chipset that offers six expansion slots (3 for PCI Express and 3 for PCI) as well as a capability to run two Nvidia graphics cards (GeForce 6600 or higher). The entry-level fee for the system will be $3000, but expect to break the $5000 barrier easily with a few check marks in the options list.

Dell will also offer the processor has an option in its upcoming Precision 380 workstation. The model comes standard with Pentium 4 600 processors and can be equipped with a 955X chipset and support for up to four SATA II drives and RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 as well as DDR2 ECC memory. Pricing for the 380 has not been announced yet.