Dell Dimension 8400 review

Dell Dimension 8400 Review

Reviewed by: Rich Brown and Bill O'Brien

Reviewed on: 19 June 2004

Features
The Dell Dimension 8400 offers the same high-end flexibility as the Dimension 8300, but with a bevy of new components. Thanks to Intel's new 925X Express chipset, Dell is able to incorporate a 3.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 560 processor, a 256MB ATI Radeon X800XT graphics card with the PCI Express interface, and 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM, none of which we've ever seen before. As is often the case with new PC technology, the hardware is significantly ahead of the software, so while these new parts have the potential to boost performance, and indeed the Dimension 8400's benchmark scores place it among the fastest PCs we've ever seen, you can expect even to reap greater benefits from the system as more-demanding apps hit the market.

It's hard to make out, but the card at the top is the new PCI Express ATI Radeon X800 XT

In the meantime, there's very little that the Dimension 8400 can't handle already. It's a fully featured multimedia PC. The crystal-clear, 17-inch Dell UltraSharp 1703FP LCD monitor and the 5.1 Dell 5650 speakers work especially well together -- the volume bar and the centre speaker attach conveniently to the bottom edge of the display. Connected to the system's Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card, the speakers produced crisp, nuanced audio in our tests. Dell has included a separate sound card instead of relying on the 925X's new embedded 7.1-channel Azalea sound chip, which doesn't exactly speak well of the new audio technology. Keep an eye out for our upcoming analysis of the Azalea sound chip compared to other audio solutions in the coming months.

Our Dimension 8400 featured a 12X Hitachi/LG DVD+RW drive. This drive burns DVD+R discs at a rapid rate, but we should note that it's less versatile than the multiformat drives commonly found on other system that burn to both +R and -R media. (Dell is firmly rooted in the DVD+R camp and sells only +R drives on its systems.) The second optical drive, the 48X Hitachi/LG CD-RW drive, is fast and flexible for both burning and playing CDs.

The monitor and the speakers turn the Dimension 8400 into an eminently capable multimedia PC

Two 160GB, 7200rpm hard drives in a Serial ATA RAID 0 array provide roughly 300GB of storage after formatting. This amount might seem like more storage than you'd ever need, but each of the motherboard's four Serial ATA channels can support up to a 400GB hard drive, which means that 300GB represents less than 20 percent of the Dimension 8400's storage potential. You can upgrade to two 400GB drives at the time of purchase, but Dell's online configurator does not allow you to upgrade to three or four hard drives, so any more storage will have to be an aftermarket upgrade. Other configuration options include an ATI TV tuner and the usual array of printers, larger monitors and other products from Dell's catalogue.

The unremarkable optical mouse and keyboard get the job done, although they don't look especially stylish doing it. At least the keyboard's multimedia buttons streamline the Dimension 8400's entertainment functions. Dell's Media Experience suite gives you apps for working with your digital media, such as music and photos. You'll also find Dell's Picture Studio 2.0, which features Paint Shop Pro Album 4.0 and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8.0, along with Sonic MyDVD for recording to DVD+RW discs. Corel's WordPerfect Office 12.0 productivity suite rounds out the software, all of which work within the framework of the Windows XP Home Edition.