Dell says XPS 700 will not ship overclocked after all

Round Rock (TX) - In a clarification this morning, Dell Computer communications specialist Liam Nguyen told TG Daily that the company’s revised XPS 700, which will be featured with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme processor on the day Intel makes its formal announcement, will not be available pre-overclocked by the factory after all. It can, of course, be overclocked by the consumer, Nguyen said.

"Dell traditionally has not shipped systems overclocked from the factory," he stated. "The lone exception was our recent, limited edition XPS 600 Renegade gaming desktop, where we did ship it overclocked."

You can’t see the overclocked processor itself, due to the big honkin’ cooler covering it up. But the placard clearly says it’s overclocked, and it led many (including us) to believe "system specs like this" would be available.

At a rollout event last 9 July at Gaylord Texan resort in Grapevine, a full Dell team including chairman Michael Dell himself unveiled the revised XPS 700. The demonstration model, Nguyen said today, was overclocked by Dell’s engineering team "to demonstrate the potential performance." However, no benchmarks were actually run during the rollout event. Further, a placard placed next to the unit clearly mentioned the overclocked processor, followed by the statement, "System specs like this available within the next 30 days at www.dell.com/gaming." The small print at the bottom of the placard contained boilerplate language that clarified what Dell typically means by hard drive space.

The placard also refers to an overclocked Nvidia 7900 GTX SLI card combo, which we can also now assume can be so configured by the customer.

During the event, Mr. Dell made clear hints that a Renegade or Renegade-like version of the XPS 700 may also be made available in very limited quantities, implying that a factory-overclocked edition of the processor was indeed feasible.

See the upgraded Dell XPS 700, with or without the overclocking ...

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