Upgrading Dell Studio XPS 8000

[Adrian West 6]

Hi.

I have a Dell Studio XPS 8000 desktop system which is 7 years old. I am currently running FSX Gold on the computer with Windows 7 Home 64 bit. The system comes with an i7 860 2.80 GHz CPU and a GeForce GTS 240 video card. It originally had 4 GB DDR memory which I have just upgraded to 8 GB. I believe I have a 350 W PSU. I am not in a position financially to buy a completely new system, and so I am looking for ways to upgrade the system, if only moderately, in order to give the PC a few more years of life.

I have researched online, and most sources suggest that Dell lock down their PCs so that they cannot be overclocked. Is this correct? I can certainly confirm that Intel's Turbo Boost Technology is not available in the BIOS.

According to Wikipedia the i7 860 processor uses Socket 1156 motherboards, and the highest clock speed accepted on these boards is 3.07 GHz (i7 880). This seems a very small speed increase over what I already have and probably not worth the financial outlay (even assuming I could still get hold of one of these CPUs). Assuming that a CPU upgrade will be either impossible or pointless, I am therefore looking at my possible options with regard to the graphics card. As far as I am aware, I have a single PCIe slot. I would like to stick with nVidia if at all possible. Could anybody recommend a graphics card that would be suitable for my system and which would give me a performance benefit (FPS in particular, as well as general picture quality)? It needs to be moderately priced, and I am of course well aware that my system would not take most of the latest cards. Would I need to have a new PSU? The other important question of course is whether it would in fact be reasonable to expect any appreciable performance benefit if I upgrade my graphics card? Or is my CPU going to be the bottleneck regardless of what graphics card I go for?

At the moment I am sticking with FSX. I am keeping an eye on P3D and may decide to give that a try as it is apparently better than FSX, especially with VAS management. There is also of course the likelihood of 64 bit simulators on the horizon, so I want to keep my options open.

I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Adrian

[Adrian West 6]

Hi.

I posted this 5 weeks ago and received no replies. In the meantime P3D v4 has of course appeared, and I am seriously considering moving over to the new platform. I really need somebody's advice on upgrading my GPU. According to Lockheed Martin I will need a minimum of 2 GB of graphics card memory, and ideally 8 GB or more. My current card has just 1 GB. I realise that 8 GB will be out of reach both financially and from a hardware point of view for my system. What would be a reasonable upgrade? Is a GPU upgrade going to be worthwhile on my system? Are there any cards that would be compatible with my system with maybe 2 GB or even 4 GB? What about the PSU?

Thanks for your help.

Adrian

[KPT747 0]

Hello Adrian,3 times no,no,no.purchase a new computer,that were the best way for now and for the future,your system is old.

best wishes.