NEW XPS 730x Owner's thread

Chris, I have seen the PCI lane numbers which certainly seem to indicate there would be no advantage to TRI SLI, but I just had to try adding  a third video card in triple SLI on two different  machines.  I don't know what other factors are involved but my experience has been just the opposite of what the PCI lane numbers seem to indicate.  Using 3DMark Advantage on my Area-51 975 with two GTX 285's in dual SLI my score was 26214, but after adding a third 285 in triple SLI my score jumped to 33772.  In my XPS 730x-i7 965EE  the score originally with dual GTX 280's in SLI was 23550 but jumped to 29024 with three GTX 280 cards in Triple SLI. The  only sacrifice is that you have to remove the sound card that is in the third slot.   But the onboard sound isn't that bad.  I'm very pleased with the increased performance of my three card Triple SLI configuration.

Hi Chris, I appreciate your response. So the Dell stock 1000-Watt PSU CAN support three GTX 285 cards, correct? Also, about the PCIe 5, 3 and 1 slots, another 730x owner (morblore) mentioned that in Tri-SLI configuration, only slot 5 will run at x16; the other two (slots 3 and 1) will each run at x8. But you pointed out that only slot 1 will switch to a slower mode (x4) when in Tri-SLI. So who is correct here? Is it x16, x8, x8 or x16, x16, x4 for slots 5, 3 and 1 in Tri-SLI? I believe this is yet to be fully determined.

Thanks guys!

Hello Chris:

I have no idea if this is the write forum to ask this but here it goes anyway:

what does a solid yellow/orange led on the dell master control panel (board) mean? [from my 730x]

I recently took off my cover to clean some dust from the front of the water cooling radiator and when i went to boot up the power button didn't respond.... = (

I have no clue what I could have done (as i didnt disconnect anything) but this yellow light persists

thank you for your time

Houston Keil-VIne

ps: thank you for creating a new forum it was a drag digging through the old one = )

I will have to look at mine to compare. When you power on, are there any beep codes? Have pushed on all the cards, cables, and plugs just to verify all are seated?

Let me clarify

I "need" (meaning in order to establish problem) to know if the

1: the light means something very specific

2: if it is general then does it come on if there is one problem? aka if i remove all but the power cable does that mean that the light will be on (and the power is fine)

or that the power is at fault or that its simply informing me that the cords are not all there.

3: I am getting a 4 beep code (which is a memory problem I believe?) but I cant imagine ( firstly what has happened) secondly I dont know how this relates to the MasterPanel.

4: I have seated everything I can think of again - I have removed all that is unnecessary (wifi card, sound card, optical drive etc) 

5: I have noticed on the H2C Power cord that one of many cables is loose (very very loose) Could (relating to question 1/2) be the only problem????????//

Thank you very much for you time (and timely response)

Does anyone run an i7-975 extreme?

Sure would hate to drop $900 on a cpu only to find it doesn't work!  I know the i7-965 works.

PDS

I think where people run into problems with it is when installing OEM volume license copies of Win7. Something to do with software keys not working with Win7 due to outdated BIOS.

This part has been solved.

But fixing/improving the bios remains.  I would like the S3 resume issue fixed!  Also worried that my 730x will not run the newer socket 1366 cpu's.  Typically cpu support  comes in bios updates.

Chris, can you find out (definitively) WHO makes this motherboard?  Perhaps it's a clone of some existing mobo and we can cross-flash bios or something.

PDS

Hi again

I have reseated everything, removed all but one stick of ram

and now I am getting the 5 beep rtc code and still the orange led on the control panel

what do I do???

any help would be very appriaciated

Everythings working again thanks for your help

H

Does the S3 hybrid sleep function now properly and consistently wake up the tower and the monitor?

I'm having a bit of difficulty with this.  It is not easy to troubleshoot.  It should work.

just tested, and yes, it works now. it wasn't working for us with the previous mobo

just tested, and yes, it works now. it wasn't working for us with the previous mobo

What is your bus speed?

S3 standby resume/wakeup fails when the bus speed is overclocked (greater than 133mhz).

PDS

133  times 20 and turbo on - all else same as factory defaults (have bumped it to 136 and 138 with all else on factory default once or twice).  Single Dell HD 4850 via dvi to 2408wfp A02.

my board is MS-7543 ver 1

if comp and 2408wfp sllep for a few minutes to a half hour or so they both wake up fine.  but if they sleep for say one and a half hours or more then the comp seems to wake but the monitor slips back into power save. If you press input source button it says no dvi signal. No difference with vga cable.

I know some don't care about S3 sleep but it is critical to the way we use our computer as it is shared by the whole family.

Hi all,

Sorry, I posted this to the forum as a new topic.  I didn't see this thread until later, but I guess it probably belongs here.  I was hoping to get some thoughts and insight.  The history of my problems are as follows:

I purchased an XPS 730x in June of '09.  It is a pretty top end machine with the following specs:

• Intel Core XE i7-965 (Factory O/C'd 3.73 GHz, 8MB L3Cache)
• 6GB RAM Multi-Channel DDR3 at 1066 MHz
• Dual GeForce GTX 285 video cards
• 640 GM - SATA-II, 7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium
• Windows Vista SP1, 64-bit home premium

Problems with it started on Saturday.  I attempted to start it up and the bar on the initial Dell logo screen with get about halfway up and then the machine would die.  It never even reached the point where it would start booting windows.  It was working on Friday, just stopped working on Saturday. 

I called support and the general thought was the motherboard was likely fried so they scheduled a tech to come out.  He visited yesterday (tuesday) and replaced the motherboard.  Lo and behold, the machine starts up.  However, I noticed an error message flash on the screen before it booted windows.  We restarted and paused on that screen and the error said "Warning!  CPU fan not working".  Something like that.  We open it back up and realize that he forgot to plug the fan in.  So he plugs the fan in and starts up the machine again, and the original problem returned.  The system couldn't get past the Dell logo screen again.  So, now, the thought was that the circuit board that the fan plugs into is actually the defective part (it is a different board than the motherboard).  So he ordered a new one of those boards, along with a new fan and heat sink.  He said he'd be back when he had the parts and he told me that I could probably run the machine with the CPU fan unplugged by leaving the case open and having an external fan blowing on it.  Then he left.  He also added that in all his time working on Dell machines, he had never seen a problem like this (lucky me).

So, after he leaves, I leave the case open and open all the windows (it's freezing outside where I am) and blow a fan on the CPU.  I didn't plan on using it for very long, I just wanted to log into it and see how things were running.  Well, the answer to that question is, not very well.  The system takes forever to login to windows.  Trying to launch any app, whether it be Excel or a game or whatever, takes minutes where it used to take seconds.  You can't do anything in the app once it finally does launch.  Basically, it is running worse than a 15 year old machine would.  I went and looked at the overclocking in the BIOS and it looks to not be overclocked anymore.  I tried adjusting it (bear in mind I am not an expert at O/C'ing) and the system popped an error that the overclocking failed and it was reverting back to factory settings.

Does anybody have any thoughts as to what is going on here?  Does the CPU throttle back if it detects that no fan is plugged in?  Do you think that simply fixing this fan will allow me to overclock the machine again and regain the performance?  Something about that just seems unlikely to me.  What are my options with Dell?

Sorry for the long story and all the questions.  I am just very aggravated that I may have wasted $5000 on a tin can with some wires in it.  I know Dell discontinued this model and I won't accept a downgrade in machine. 

Thanks for the feedback.