Difference between Dell Studio XPS and XPS 435?

[thickly]

Hi all,

 

I'm in the market for a new mid-range PC and am strongly considering picking up a Dell - I've configured a Studio XPS and a Studio XPS 435 identically but the XPS 435 is $170 more expensive ($1,319 vs. $1,489 with 24" monitor - full specs below). Is there something I'm missing regarding the price? Would I just be paying extra money for a nicer looking case or can I expect better performance from the XPS 435? One of the cons I have read about the XPS is it has limited options for upgrading (ie only room for one graphics card). Is it worth the $170 to have some more upgrade options available to me if I need it later?

 

Feel free to advise for/against either of these machines or make some recommendations for some others you think I might want to consider - I'd like to stay below $1,500. For some background - I have been out of the viz side of the business for a while but I'm starting to get pulled back into it. Not sure how much work will be coming so obviously hesitant to drop a ton of money on a new machine, but my old P4 certainly won't cut it anymore. 90% of the work will be arch viz with 3ds Max, rendering with Maxwell. The other 10% is Autocad. I must say from the research and reviews I've read, both of these machines seem like the best in terms of value/performance, especially with the included monitor. I'm definitely not a techie though, so any advice would be appreciated.

 

 

Specs:

PROCESSORS: Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor(8MB L3 Cache, 2.66GHz)

WARRANTY AND SERVICE 2Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis edit

OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit edit

OFFICE SOFTWARE No Productivity software pre-installed edit

MEMORY 6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz - 6 DIMMs edit

HARD DRIVE 750GB - 7200RPM, SATA 3.0Gb/s, 16MB Cache edit (XPS 435 only comes with 650GB - not a deal-breaker though)

OPTICAL DRIVE Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capability edit

MONITOR 24" Dell S2409W Full HD Widescreen Monitor edit

VIDEO CARD ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB edit

SOUND CARD Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio edit

SPEAKERS No speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)

 

Thanks in advance,

Sean

[AJLynn]

Yeah, this is obviously the right place to look for Dell sales info. Because Dell doesn't have people working the phones or anything.

[thickly]

hmmm, it seemed like the right place considering the description of the forum is "general discussions about rendering hardware and technical issues". If I called Dell I would get exactly what you said - "sales info" - what I was hoping for was more of an unbiased point of view from the helpful people around here. sorry for the inconvenience.