New XPS 8700 - Icky GPU? Possibly Faulty Motherboard? User error? Opinions?

Hello,

I was really excited to get my new Dell XPS 8700 last week, especially at the price I got it for. I didn't get to unbox it and set it up until the weekend. I have the previous model as well, XPS 8500, which I have been lovingly using for quite a while now and have had no problems with whatsoever. When I started to use my XPS 8700, I was expecting a different experience (a better one, hopefully). Instead, I get confusion and disappointment.

The first thing I always do is make the recovery DVDs before I do anything else. I generate a copy in DVD format, and then I will do a USB copy as well, just in case.

Then, I started playing around with the computer and getting familiar with Windows 8 again. I have a Windows 8 laptop, but, don't really use it that often unless I'm lounging around doing nothing. I do most of my work on the desktop. I go online and start watching YouTube and a few other websites and I notice that the video quality doesn't seem to the same, especially videos and clips that I have saved on external drives. Streaming video from the net will stall (but audio keeps playing) and then will eventually catches up to itself. I think this is weird. I know I didn't get the best GPU with the tower, but, it should be able to handle to at least handle YouTube.

I made a bunch of upgrades to my XPS 8500 over the past couple of years, and since they were compatible with the 8700, I decided to migrate them over. 32GB of RAM, Blu-ray drives, and a 250GB Samsung EVO mSATA SSD.

Attempting to do a fresh install of WIndows 8 (Oem CD) on the mSATA, I had the most difficult time getting that simple task completed. I didn't realize the drive had to be wiped with no partitions so Windows 8 could be installed while the PC was in EUFI Secured Boot mode. It was really a pain, but, I got it done and installed all the updates. Again, even with the SSD, my experience is still not what I am expecting. Same having the same video issues on YouTube (even though they are fully loaded), and my saved videos look pixelated and out of focus when in full screen mode. Then, the PC itself seems to be non-responsive every so often, but, it never locks up and does recover from whatever is happening. I'm not really happy at this point. I think maybe I messed something up while fooling with the UEFI/Legacy and Secured Boot mode settings when Windows 8 wouldn't recognize optical drives and secondary hard drives (even though the BIOS did). The SATA operation was always in ACHI mode.

I thought maybe it's Windows 8. The next day I went through it all again, but, this time I put a clean install of Windows 7 Pro on the mSATA drive. Things started to be better for a while. Video issues seem to be gone and everything seemed zippy and sharp. I let Windows Update do it's thing last night. When I got up this morning, I noticed the PC had restarted and recovered from a BSOD event. I was livid. Still am. I have never had a BSOD event with my 8500 and I really do not want anymore of them.

Could it really be the video card? It's the standard NVidia GT635 that came with it. I really hope it's not the motherboard. My XPS 8500 has the Radeon 7570 card.

Any input or feedback would be most helpful.

Thanks,

Cliffton