The All-in-One Battle: Dell's XPS One 24 vs. Apple's iMac
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 30, 2008 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
The CPU Question: Slow Quad-Core or Fast Dual-Core?
Normally when you compare two similarly priced PCs these days the specs are extremely close. For whatever reason, with all-in-ones, the specs couldn't possibly be more varied. Dell ships all of its XPS One 24s with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 (2.33GHz) while Apple offers either a 2.80GHz or 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo in its 24" iMacs, leaving us with the not nearly age-old discussion of what's better: a fast dual core or a slow quad core?
In the early days the decision was simple, you only gave up a small amount of clock speed if you opted for quad-core over dual (around 266MHz) but in today's comparison the difference is a bit more staggering. The top end iMac gives you a processor that runs its two cores 733MHz faster than the four cores in the Dell, not to mention that those two cores have more cache than is split among four cores in the XPS One 24. Apple's got a higher clock and more cache, but Dell has more cores, so which is better?
Back when AMD introduced its triple-core Phenom parts I put together a little table illustrating the speedup you get from one, two and four cores in SYSMark 2007:
| SYSMark 2007 Overall | E-Learning | Video Creation | Productivity | 3D | |
| Intel Celeron 420 (1 core, 512KB, 1.6GHz) | 55 | 52 | 55 | 54 | 58 |
| Intel Celeron E1200 (2 cores, 512KB, 1.6GHz) | 76 | 68 | 91 | 70 | 78 |
| % Increase from 1 to 2 cores | 38% | 31% | 65% | 30% | 34% |
| Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2 cores, 4MB, 2.66GHz) | 138 | 147 | 141 | 120 | 145 |
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 (4 cores, 8MB, 2.66GHz) | 150 | 145 | 177 | 121 | 163 |
| % Increase from 2 to 4 cores | 8.7% | 0% | 26% | 1% | 12% |
The purpose of the table was to show that while the move from one to two cores is justifiable for the vast majority of users, going from two to four isn't nearly as high yielding. The issue is that while most applications these days are multi-threaded, they are either still bound by the performance of a single thread or they are only able to split the workload two ways, meaning half of the cores on a quad-core CPU would be left with nothing to do. The exceptions are things like video encoding or 3D rendering as you can see from the results above.
To get an idea of general system performance between these two machines I turned to PCMark Vantage, which actually does a good job of comparing similar CPU architectures in a handful of general purpose tests. I'm going to highlight the important tests that really show where these two systems perform the most differently:
| PCMark Memories 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| CPU Image Manipulation | 3.78 MB/s | 3.319 MB/s |
| HDD Importing pictures to Windows Photo Gallery | 26.533 MB/s | 31.38 MB/s |
The PCMark Memories 1 test is actually a multitasking test with two things happening at once; some basic image manipulation is being performed alongside importing pictures into the Windows Photo Gallery. Both of these tasks are multithreaded and thus there's an actual advantage to having more than two cores, which is why despite the clock speed deficit Dell's XPS One 24 is able to pull ahead.
| PCMark Memories 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Video Transcoding VC-1 to WMV9 | 2.681 MB/s | 3.075 MB/s |
The Memories 2 test is a simple video transcoding test going from VC-1 to WMV9, and here we see the quad-core advantage once more. The TV and Movies 1 suite also performs a video transcoding operation but this time while playing back a HD-DVD, while both systems are able to play the video back at full frame rate the transcoding task completes faster on the quad-core Dell system.
| PCMark TV and Movies 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Video Transcoding (VC1 to VC1) | 0.435 MB/s | 0.664 MB/s |
| Video Playback VC1 HD-DVD with SD commentary | 29.46 fps | 29.44 fps |
The TV and Movies 2 test is similar to the one I just mentioned, here we're playing a slightly more stressful HD-DVD source but hitting the disk in an access pattern similar to what would be used in Windows Media Center. Once again both systems pull off the video playback just fine, but the Dell machine is twice as fast when it comes to the disk portion of the test thanks to its extra cores.
| PCMark TV and Movies 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| HDD Windows Media Center | 25.007 MB/s | 44.642 MB/s |
| Video Playback VC1 HD-DVD with SD commentary | 29.431 fps | 29.432 fps |
The Gaming suites clearly go to the iMac; most games don't use more than two threads and Apple's dual cores are clocked much higher than Dell's four, not to mention that the iMac has a much faster GPU as well. If you want to game, the iMac is the way to go (that still feels weird to type).
| PCMark Gaming 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Data Decompression | 764.975 MB/s | 796.299 MB/s |
| GPU Gaming | 22.4 fps | 9.8 fps |
| PCMark Gaming 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| CPU Gaming | 8726.193 ops/s | 7518.558 ops/s |
| HDD | 10.692 MB/s | 11.054 MB/s |
The Music 1 test is a light multitasking test, here we're viewing web pages, transcoding a MP3 to WMA format and adding music to a Windows Media Player library. The web task is faster on the iMac, while the other two tasks are slightly faster on the Dell. I'd call this one a wash, the two perform about the same.
| PCMark Music 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Web Page Rendering - Music Shop | 14 pages/s | 12.167 pages/s |
| Audio Transcoding (MP3 to WMA) | 0.578 MB/s | 0.633 MB/s |
| HDD Adding Music to WMP | 4.953 MB/s | 5.06 MB/s |
The second test is simply transcoding a WAV file to WMA lossless, basically backing up a CD. I haven't seen audio transcoding optimized for more than two threads, so it makes sense that Apple takes the advantage here - the iMac is around 27% faster than the Dell XPS One 24.
| PCMark Music 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Audio Transcoding WAV to WMA Lossless | 8.884 MB/s | 6.971 MB/s |
The PCMark Communications 1 suite runs three tasks, here we're encrypted data, compressing data and running rules on a Windows Mail inbox. Despite the multitasking nature of the workload, it's simply not heavily threaded enough to stress all four of Dell's cores, Apple takes the clear win here.
| PCMark Communications 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Data Encryption (CNG AES CBC) | 4.211 MB/s | 3.655 MB/s |
| Data Compression | 4.797 MB/s | 3.085 MB/s |
| Windows Mail - Copying | 9.807 ops/s | 4.605 ops/s |
The same goes for the 2nd communications suite, it's a 3 task scenario but the iMac pulls ahead in each of the three tasks.
| PCMark Communications 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Web Page Rendering - News Serial | 2.229 pages/s | 1.776 pages/s |
| Data Decryption (CNG AES CBC) | 112.91 MB/s | 92.977 MB/s |
| HDD Windows Defender | 11.183 MB/s | 10.665 MB/s |
The last two Productivity suites echo what we've seen thus far, take out video encoding/decoding and the quad-core choice just doesn't make sense; a faster dual core wins.
| PCMark Productivity 1 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Text Editing | 861.106 KB/s | 597.045 KB/s |
| PCMark Productivity 2 | Apple iMac 24" (Core 2 Duo 3.06GHz) | Dell XPS One 24 (Core 2 Quad 2.33GHz) |
| Windows Contacts - Searching | 17865 contacts/s | 12778 contacts/s |
| Windows Mail Searching | 8.444 ops/s | 4.901 ops/s |
| Web Page Rendering - Favorites Group - Parallel | 1.424 pages/s | 1.508 pages/s |
| HDD Application Loading | 2.61 MB/s | 2.551 MB/s |
What's interesting here is that there is no clear victory, while I'd venture a guess that the vast majority of users would benefit from the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo in the iMac, it really depends on your usage model. If you are doing a lot of video editing, video encoding/transcoding and image manipulation - basically if you're using this thing as more of a workstation, then you're better off with the Core 2 Quad Q8200 in the Dell. If you're doing lighter multitasking, general usage stuff or basically anything other than 3D rendering/video manipulation, you'll find the iMac faster - even under Windows. Strange.
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UpsetAtDell - Saturday, December 19, 2009 - link
Beware ordering a Dell system! I ordered one for my mom for Christmas on Nov 20th with a delivery date of Dec 9th. On the 17th of Dec I was notified that it wouldn't be delivered until Dec 31st, too late for me to set it up for her. After a very difficult time getting through to a customer service representative, I was told that they would not rush the order or rush shipping for me. I had to cancel and buy from a retail store instead. Beware Dell!strikeback03 - Monday, November 3, 2008 - link
Would it kill either of these to have USB ports somewhere more accessible than the back of the device? I plug stuff into my front ports daily. Maybe on a side or behind a door or something? The single-cable look goes away if you have a USB extension hanging out full-time to get a port in a more useful location.Maybe someone here can answer this - how do you make OSX play all the photos in a folder on a USB drive as a slideshow? I brought some photos from an event at work into the main office, and we decided to show them on the head administrator's 24" iMac as it was the largest display around. We could get a slideshow to launch but not play, we ended up launching XP in Parallels to see the photos. Later that night I IMed a friend who uses a Mac, and she didn't know either. Can this really be that hard?
ffakr - Monday, November 10, 2008 - link
Apple's keyboard has an un-powered USB port on each side. It'll run most things.. but it doesn't have the current to run a bus powered 2.5" drive or the like.However, I agree.. the iMac needs to have a more convenient way to access USB. I use a MacBook Pro docked to a Dell 24" and I'm very happy to have 2 USB ports on the right side (and a flash reader!!, come on Apple).
OS X doesn't integrate a slideshow viewer into the Finder like Windows does in Explorer. Apple wants you to import them into iPhoto.
There are several easy ways to view pictures though.. This is generally fine for the owners of a machine but I understand that you just wanted to look at the pics on someone else's computer.
- There is a finder view called CoverFlow. You might be familiar with this in iTunes for Windows. It's also a Finder view and you can scroll the previews as large as you want and flip through the pics like you were shuffling photos on a desktop. You can switch between finder views from the top border of a Finder window.
- Select all the files and open them. Unless you've set .jpgs to open with another app, they should all open in Preview.app which will show you one picture per page (It's the same interface used to render PDFs in OS X).
- Pretty similar.. you can drag the volume (flash drive) or folder full of images onto an app like Preview and it'll open them up. It actually does something cool.. it'll open up photos in sub-folders together in the same window. This is a good reason to have common apps in your Dock.
It's a Mac.. there's probably a half dozen other ways to do this that I can't think of or that I'm not aware of.
As for the Dock argument. There are some cool things you can do with the Dock that you can't do with a task bar, at least I don't think you can do them in Windows. I'm still a 95/98/2000/xp guy.. i've mostly avoided Vista.
- I can drop a folder onto a task bar and access the content by clicking on it. The contents open up in a transparent window. I can drill down into sub directories by holding down the mouse or I can open the directory in a finder window.
- The dock is organized. Permanent shortcuts on the top/left, running apps that aren't always on the dock to the right/bottom of your permanent icons, then a divider bar where folders, doc shortcuts and collapsed App windows go.
- App icons can be stateful. They can give you feedback on your unread mail count (mentioned earlier)...they can have progress bars.. they can even show content including video/animation.
- I don't recall seeing this in any Windows app.. you can right click (command-left click) on a Dock icon and perform App defined things. e.g. I can right click on Mail and select Compose an Email.
rudy - Sunday, November 2, 2008 - link
In this.4wardtristan - Saturday, November 1, 2008 - link
yes a SSD would be a huge improvement over a traditional HDD, but are you (or any one else) ready to fork up the cash to pay for 750GB of SSD space??? (with todays prices)nubie - Sunday, November 2, 2008 - link
I have been running my PCs off of scavenged Tivo HDDs for about 2 years, it doesn't need to be SSD to be unobtrusive.The HDD just needs to not sound like a rock crusher and/or jet engine, not really difficult. But it does require attention and maybe a couple $$.
Ofish - Saturday, November 1, 2008 - link
"...I settled on the latter and simply drug the desktop icon to the Internet menu in the Dock."I couldn't pick up my couch, so instead I simply drug it across the room. lol
I think you mean dragged
nubie - Saturday, November 1, 2008 - link
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drug%5B3...">http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drug%5B3...I don't know, Merriam-Webster has a listing for it, maybe it is best not to complain before checking a dictionary.
I thought this was an interesting review, but I still don't see why they can't put a real PCI-E card in these systems, the Dell is huge (and heavy) with plenty of room for a full-size video card.
Dell needs to pick a quiet hard drive too, this is an area where manufacturers really need to run quality control.
TA152H - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Citing the PS/2 Model 25 as an example of an "all in one" computer is about 10 years late to the party. There were many before that, including the TRS-80 Model II, Model III, and Model 4. The Lisa was essentially like that too, unless you count the keyboard, and so was the original Mac.I have all these vintage machines at home, and the PS/2 Model 25 is kind of crappy. PS/2's as a rule were far better made than the rubbish that is sold today, but the Model 25 is the bottom feeder of the line, and is rather inelegant. If you really want a laugh, get your hands on a Model 4P. This monster was supposed to be portable, but it's a real beast. I don't have one though :( .
xyster - Friday, October 31, 2008 - link
Windows vs OSX debate aside, the XPS 24 seems to me like it was designed to be a media center PC, not a gaming machine. The premium speakers, the media center controls on the machine, the trackpad on the keyboard, the choice of a quad-core processor and the choice to use a low-heat producing graphics solution-- its pretty obvious.The iMac on the otherhand, being one of the few desktop choices from Apple, was designed to be more open-ended, for gamers and general use included.
I think the Dell excels at what it was created for, and in that regard it beats out the iMac. With all the other alternatives in the PC market, if someone was looking for a gaming machine, I wouldnt suggest the Dell, but something else, which would excel as a gaming machine. Unlike the Mac market, the PC market has plenty of alternatives.
As a general computing device though, the iMac is a nice computer. I just dont think comparing these two computers to see which is 'best' is correct. Using the Apple as a reference system makes sense, but treat the Dell in the regards for which it was designed for.
Good article overall though. Thanks for posting it.