XPS 700

[danmitch1]

Hi , Ive been researching for a week now and basically have come up with really mixed up answers and thought you guys might be able to shed some light on this situation.
I Have a Dell xps 700.....yes its old but i believe it still has life in it.(need it to live for 1 more year b4 i buy again ..it was expensive 2700$ in 07)
Not too happy with dell anymore (ill build next time) they had a "60 day motherboard free exchange " from xps 700 to 720 boards that i was never informed about back in 07 .they had this because the 700 didnt have a great upgrade path ! I bought it thinking it did ......Long story short

I need more processing speed . Dell tells me that the highest cpu they can offer me is
* Intel® CoreTM 2 Extreme X6800 (4MB L2 Cache,2.93GHz,1066
which i dont find worth it for this old machine.
So then i read this Re: XPS 700 Processor Upgrade - Desktop General Hardware Forum - Desktop - Dell Community
And they say i could go for the quad
q6700 -qx6800 found both on ebay for under 200 bucks various sellers..
but Im not really sure about this
same socket same tech Nm same fsb ,
i guess dell wouldnt tell me about it because they want me to buy a new motherboard or even a new pc all together
i just dont want to screw up the pc or waste my money .
Ive tryied overclocking and with the xps 700 your forced to use Ntune with a locked cpu so you need to fsb it and im not sure what the board can take over 1066fsb and dont know how far 800mhz ram can be pushed(i know thats another subject)
should i risk the quad ? Could it screw up my pc?
anyway thanks for your time guys !
Dan.
some various specs below from cpuz

Processors Information
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Processor 1 ID = 0
Number of cores 2 (max 2)
Number of threads 2 (max 2)
Name Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Codename Conroe
Specification Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz
Package (platform ID) Socket 775 LGA (0x0)
CPUID 6.F.6
Extended CPUID 6.F
Core Stepping B2
Technology 65 nm
Core Speed 1596.0 MHz
Multiplier x FSB 6.0 x 266.0 MHz
Rated Bus speed 1064.0 MHz
Stock frequency 2133 MHz
Instructions sets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, EM64T, VT-x
L1 Data cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L1 Instruction cache 2 x 32 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
L2 cache 2048 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64-byte line size
FID/VID Control yes
FID range 6.0x - 8.0x
Max VID 1.325 V

Chipset
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Northbridge NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Intel Edition rev. C1
Southbridge NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI rev. A2
Graphic Interface PCI-Express
PCI-E Link Width x16
PCI-E Max Link Width x16
Memory Type DDR2
Memory Size 8192 MBytes
Channels Dual
Memory Frequency 399.0 MHz (2:3)
CAS# latency (CL) 5.0
RAS# to CAS# delay (tRCD) 5
RAS# Precharge (tRP) 5
Cycle Time (tRAS) 18
Bank Cycle Time (tRC) 22


DMI BIOS
vendor Dell Inc.
version 1.4.1
date 05/07/2007

Windows Version Microsoft Windows Vista (6.0) Home Premium Edition Service Pack 2 (Build 6002)
DirectX Version 11.0

1000watt psu


Thanks again for reading !

[Soultribunal]

The problem with upgrading Pre-builts like that is you are using a spoon to bail out a boat full of water. Its a lesson in futility.

The highest CPU they offer you is probably because you have a Board Limitation and power delivery limitation on the board.

I would not bother putting money towards it in all honesty. Rather, learn some guides for making your own computer and illicit the help of the forum here.
We would be happy to guide you in that regard. You will find you can build yourself twice the system for the same cost.

The only thing that ever differs from Pre-built - Self Built is the support level.

ST

[Soullessone21]

Drop Vista go to windows 7 and you should see a world of speed improvement :)

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by Soullessone21

Drop Vista go to windows 7 and you should see a world of speed improvement :)

If there is driver support to do that.
I couldn't with my Wife's Dell.

-ST

[Rasparthe]

The problem with the Dell XPS 700 series is the BIOS. They never had a BIOS that supported 45nm chips that is why the best chip they can guarantee is the x6800 and the like. Some people have been able to get 45nm chips to work but it involves a lot of workarounds, if I remember, the likes of.... remove original chip with power still plugged in and then replace with new chip. If power is lost the chip will not work. Must be changed with power to the board. Even then it was hit and miss which chips would work and not. If you are going to upgrade find a 65nm quad chip, the Q6600 is probably your best beat for price/performance ratio.

Custom built FTW.

EDIT: Just looking around on Kijiji, here in Toronto it looks like the Q6600 are going from 75 to 100 which seems like a pretty reasonable upgrade path from a dual to fend off the upgrade bug until next year.

[keto]

elicit. Illicit has an entirely different, dark and shady, connotation ;)

[Soultribunal]

Originally Posted by keto

elicit. Illicit has an entirely different, dark and shady, connotation ;)

Oh know, here its illicit, you just haven't been invited yet to that side of HWC

ST

[Slik]

The Intel 6850 Extreme should work. 3ghz stock speed. Easy to O.C. If you can fin one.

[danmitch1]

Thanks for the responses guys !
Soultribunal , your very right , i should have build from the start .Ive built in the past with success but this time with the dell i figured id save some time..back fired.. such is life.. And i totally agree internet Forums are a great place for support in all topics of life actually .

Soullessone21, ive though of that too but for now ill deal with vista until my next build .
Soultribunal , i bought the system with xp 32 and yes i 'ass'umed dell would have sent me a 64 bit os with the 64 bit system.....that was my first upgrade problem actually ,i was trying to install more ram to find out that it was xp32 and could not boot with more that 3 gigs of ram without service pack 2 installed ,so i bought vista and everything installed great(i also de-dell ed it as much as i could) then slapped 4 gigs of ram , i just put 8 gigs in last week to max out that parameter .

Rasparthe , do you think it will work though ? ive also searched for these cpus and they are not that expensive . Im just paranoid about perhaps messing up the pc by trying a foreign cpu and well ,wasting money ...also that installing the cpu with the power on thing.. Lol sounds risky ,

keto ,yes .

Slik , As i asked Rasparthe , do you think this will work and or screw up the pc ?

I guess really what my question should be is What am i looking at other than fsb , nm tech ,socket , power usage when im updating a cpu ? When ive built pcs in the past these are the things id check...
I guess there might be unknown variables when dealing with dell proprietary gear.

I guess i should also let you guys know im working with 3ds max 2012 , saw a twin dell manu. nvidia 7900 gtx brand new for 100 bucks ,do you think sli with this video card would increase render time or is that more of a cpu speed and the old "bucket speed"( again not to screw up the motherboard forum)

Thanks again for your input guys !!!

Dan

[sswilson]

I'd think that a Q6600 would probably be the way to go as well. Wish you were local... I've got one we could drop in just to verify compatability, but AFAIC, if it'll take a X6800, it should have no problems with a Q6600, and if there are any OC options on the board, you might not have too many problems getting 3.4G even with a mediocre chip, and poor OC capabilities.