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AltairDusk

3 Posts

315792

November 17th, 2008 12:00

XPS 700 Processor Upgrade

Hello all, I've been trying to find out what processors are compatible with my XPS 700 with mixed results.  I bought the unit used and previous owner never did the free upgrade to the 720 motherboard so I know quad cores are out :emotion-6:   What I'm trying to figure out is if the E8400 Wolfsdale will work in my system, I believe it should since it's LGA 775 but I've heard from a few people that the original XPS 700 motherboard may not be able to handle the new 45nm process chips.  Is anyone running this chip on an XPS 700 without the motherboard upgrade or does anyone know for sure if this chip is compatible?  If not what am I restricted to for choices?

Thanks in advance for the help :emotion-1:

Tom Mizell

7 Posts

June 9th, 2009 02:00

If my memory serves me correctly that motherboard has the nvidia intel/ 5xx sli chipset.
 
While different, nvidia Nforce based motherboards share the same front side bus chipset with the Dell hybrid intel/nvidia motherboards.
SO- I went to Nvidia and found the motherboard / processor matrix for the different NForce motherboard chipsets.  I attached the list.
 
It came down to this  If the procesor has a 1066 front side bus, it was compatible with the board.
If it had 1333 front side bus - it would not work.
 
This actually has to do with the manufacture of the processor.  I  understand it the 1066 mhz processors are built  made with 65 nm technology.
 
 
The E7600 is made with 45 nm technology
 
 
SOOOO although you are at 1066, the E7600 may still be a problem.
 
 
I successfully ran a QX6600 on a XPS 700 board with the most recent Dell bios for the motherboard.  that would be 5/31/2007  Version 1.4.1
 
I sold my 700 and now own a 720.
 
Hope this helps.
 
PS.  I have tested quite a few video cards lately and I can tell you this  -- The amount of level 2 cache is more important than the speed of the video card.  I
 
 have taken TOP video cards and put them on test motherboards. TOP of the line EVGA triple SLI 780 Nforce boards and with a mediocre processor they run marginally.  I am not a gamer, but on the test bench with a  Pentium D 3.2 800fsb 4mm cache  Geforce 8800GTX , Geforce 9800 GTX and Radeon 2GB  4850 X2 give 3D Mark scores around 7000. 
 
Put them in the Dell with a Q6600  2.4 with quad cores and 8mb cache and they jump up to over 12000.-14000 range
 
Previously tested them on a lesser motherboard with a Pentium D  2.8 800FSB 2 MB cache and got scores in the 4500-5000 range.
 
 
SOO draw your own conclusions.  even though I have  more than capable video cards the processors and the amount of cache proved to be the major factor in determining the performance.
All the boards had 4GB of memory

mayu_1

22 Posts

June 9th, 2009 10:00

Let me Thank you so much for the prompt reply and taking time for me in helping with this matter. My friend ordered the E7600 via newegg.com. We got the processor in the morning and you were right it does not work at all Now I have no idea how to return the processor since the return policy is very different. Now you mentioned Q6600 will work, I looked for that but could not find any but I found a Q6700 for 200.00$ you think that will work? I would appriciate your help again thank you so much.

raymond502

5 Posts

July 22nd, 2009 12:00

I ALSO HAVE A 700 I LOOKING TO UPGRADE THE CPU ALSO I HAVE 8 GB OF RAM AND ALSO GXT285 OC 2GB, JUST NEED TO REPLACE CPU PLEASE PASS ON ANY INFORMATION ON THIS

 

THANKS

raymond502

5 Posts

July 22nd, 2009 12:00

I HAVE XPS 700 I DON'T THINK IT MOBD HAS BEEN UPGRADED BOURGHT IT IN THE OUTLET. I WOULD LIKE TO UPGRADE TO A Q6700

SYSTEM SPECS

8GB OF RAM

GXT285 OC 2GB

DUE CORE 2.13 MHZ

mayu_1

22 Posts

July 23rd, 2009 10:00

Hi,

Raymond. If you have the original Dell 700 XPS like I have you will have no problem upgrading to Q6700. I upgraded almost two months ago and its running really good.

jimmyclackers

4 Posts

September 19th, 2009 18:00

Hi. I just had a quick question. When you guys replaced the processor with the Q6600, did you use the fan/heatsink that came with the processor, or just the stock  XPS 700 heatsink/fan?

Davet50

14.4K Posts

September 19th, 2009 19:00

I went through the 700/720 upgrade so my heat sink is the same one as I had on the 700 board. There actually is no differnence between the 700/710/720 stock heat sink.

HERE is some info on applying thermal paste. The key is to make sure you clean the old stuff off the bottom of the heat sink

Davet50

14.4K Posts

September 19th, 2009 19:00

The Q6600 will work just fine on the stock heat sink. My Q6600 runs between 40 -45 from idle to gaming. and its on the stock heat sink

jimmyclackers

4 Posts

September 19th, 2009 19:00

I see that you have the xps 720. I still have the stock mobo on the xps 700. Does that make a difference? Also, this is the first time upgrading a processor so I'm not exactly sure when and where I add the thermal compound...? I read a few tutorials online but I wasn't sure if you do anything different when using the stock heatsink on the xps 700?

jimmyclackers

4 Posts

September 20th, 2009 00:00

Thanks for all the help and info Davet. I'll try it tomrorow.

mayu_1

22 Posts

September 21st, 2009 05:00

Well I am running Q6700 on my XPS 700 and I am using the original Fan/Heatsink and have no problems at all so I think you should be alright too.

Sasparilla

4 Posts

November 3rd, 2009 20:00

Just wanted to add another voice on this, also had a stock 700 and just upgraded to the quad Q6700 from the 1.86Ghz dual and continued with the stock XPS heatsink (considering the way the case is designed I'd stick with the stock XPS heatsink, its a heck of a lot more expensive than the Intel one that comes with the chip and the XPS one is made with the case airflow in mind).

It runs great - makes me so happy, its like a new machine...time to go get some memory for these 4 hungry processors.  ;-) 

I just wanted to mention that I used thermal paste instructions for the quad from the arctic silver site (although I used a different brand of thermal paste since I was too impatient to get some arctic silver mail order) over here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/ins_route_step2intelas5.html

The only real nerve wracking thing for me was putting the new chip in - i.e. hoping its centered so that no pins were/would bent and then putting the pressure back on with the socket release lever - those pins are really small and it felt really good after it booted back up.  Good luck everybody.

pdbuzz

2 Posts

November 11th, 2009 12:00

I'd like to add my experience as well.

I have a stock XPS 700, running a Xeon 3220, on 2GB of PC5400 RAM, on the 1.4.1 BIOS.

I made the leap to the Xeon because it's basically a Q6600 with 'papers' and it was a good price on Ebay. ;)

Here is my performance screen shot with Windows 7 64 bit.

I bought 4GB of PC6400 to throw into it, based on the 'Crucial Scanner' program telling me PC6400 would work, but the box wouldn't even post.  Tossed the old RAM in, BAM, works like a charm again.  I'll just get another pair of PC5400 1GB sticks to fill it up and see what that does to the memory score!

usnis0922

2 Posts

February 9th, 2010 06:00

I found this thread to be a great deal of help. I upgraded to a new X6800 that i got off Ebay and applied BIOS update. PC runs like its brand new. I missed out on the MOBO upgrade unfortunately but this procssor eased the pain. I did the BIOS overclock and my system had more issues than not with it so I run it stock at 2.93 GHZ. This is more than enough. I play COD MW2 and now my bottleneck is the graphics card. I run at 1024x768 and normal texture resolution 4x ant aliasing and vert sync. I average around 70 fps. Eventually I'll upgrade the card but the processor improved in game performance and alt tab functionality and significantly increased the overall machine's speed when using regular programs. I highly recommend upgrading to unlock this old machine's potential. I see some on here run the GTX 260 and 280 and I plan on swapping to one of those at some point. I currently run the 7950 GX2 and 4gb of standard RAM. I hope this helps those other curious folks who want to upgrade their CPU. I initially had a problem loading the 1.4.1 BIOS and it would hang on attempting to update BIOS. I did the jumper reset on the board, re-tried and it loaded in about 5 seconds with no issues.

If anyone wants the ebay info on who I bought it from please pm me. I dont want to appear as I am endorsing someone on a board. The guy I bought it from had about 80 brand new ones in stock. No idea how he got them but it was a VERY good price and I can attest to the legitimacy of the ebay add. GL all.

mayu_1

22 Posts

February 10th, 2010 14:00

Hi CESARG,

May be you can help me with this problem. I have the same system you have except the CPU, I have the Q6700 not the extreme edition. I was wondering how do you go into bios option and over clock the CPU. I don't get that option when I hit F2 at startup. I have downloaded the nVidia nTune and that does not help too much, the stock speed for Q6700 is 2.6GHz and the most I can do is only 2.8GHz. I have 4.0GB RAM and nvidia GTX 280 OC edition. I have the latest 1.4.1 BIOS as well. Any help would be greatly welcomed.

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