Hi guys

 

I going to admit I don’t know enough about the hardware end of my PC then I should. I used to love taking apart old pcs and adding new memory and hard drives, any knowledge I had back then is well and truly gone. :blush:

 

I need to ask the experts here for a little straight forward help

In April I bought a new xps 8500 it runs great, but as most of you guys know great is never good enough.

I Have…

AMD Radeon HD 7770 2GB DDR5 Graphics Card

16384MB (4x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel

Intel i7-2600 @3.40 ghz

256GB SSD + 2TB (7,200rpm) SATA Hard Drive

 

I believe I have enough memory but i am open to options on that

 

I would like to change from ATI to an NVidia gtx 680 or similar is this a straight plug one out plug one in situation, or do I need to do more home work?

 

Also I‘ve read on various forums I got the dud of the entire i7 family. What could I get as a replacement to push my ghz into the 4 - 4.2 range without overclocking?

 

I have no problem trying to overclock but I would like to wait a couple of months before try that, as I tend to break things :rolleyes:

 

As always many thanks

Your biggest gain will be from overclocking the i7 chip. Problem is you have a Dell XPS which I think has a locked bios and the chip may not be a K version so you are limited there. With this limitation on the chip upgrading the video card may not help much but I am not the video card expert so I will let others comment on that side of things. Your memory is fine, no advantage to add more.

Your biggest gain will be from overclocking the i7 chip. Problem is you have a Dell XPS which I think has a locked bios and the chip may not be a K version so you are limited there. With this limitation on the chip upgrading the video card may not help much but I am not the video card expert so I will let others comment on that side of things. Your memory is fine, no advantage to add more.

 

Hi Mark

 

Yeah its the non k version. From what i've seen on the net i can't do much ( or anything ) with that i7. Locked bios? I knew my old laptop had locked bios never knew a pc could have locked bios.

 

Thanks Mark i've learned something new now.

Yeah just looked locked bios :mad:

 

Is plug and play hardware still an option or is this now pretty much a non upgradable machine.

Hehe, yeah, Dell tends to do that. Your best shot is get GTX680, crank the SGSS up and enjoy the best visuals out there. You'll have to moderate some settings for graphics though.

And then I suggest my guide as to how set up the I7 + Nvidia card

Many happy campers out there!

Thanks Word Not Allowed

 

Your guide has been like a bible to me these last few months.Thank you for the work you do.

 

Now im off to look for a GTX680.