XPS 720 BIOS A06 Released

yeah i thought the 630's were overclockable ?, still i supposed by being able to use the q9s  our pc will last a little bit longer :) why cant we use all the q9 series processors?

Ok I am not trying to be negative and I do applaud Dell for still thinking about all us 720 owners, But I just don't see the big deal here.

Ok the Yorkies are on a 45nm substrate and run cooler..but the real advantage is overclockability which with a 720 we just dont have.

From what i have been reading the Q9450 has only minor speed increases in speed over a Q6600 unless you can overclock it.

Being open to discussion I am looking for more reasons why this is a big deal with a non overclockable system?

I just bought my system month ago,so do I need this update? please advice,thanks~~~

 

P.S. BTW I think I got the BIOS A05...

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@Abiosis wrote:

I just bought my system month ago,so do I need this update? please advice,thanks~~~

 

P.S. BTW I think I got the BIOS A05...

Message Edited by Abiosis on 04-22-2008 05:02 PM

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As promised, I installed my Q9450 back into my XPS 720 now with A06 firmware.  Sure enough everything seems to work perfectly!!!

 

The only think I'm kind of worried about is the idle cpu temperatures for the CPU being reported.  According to Nvidia System Monitor:

 

CPU1 Tj Temp: 51C

CPU2 Tj Temp: 47C

CPU3 Tj Temp: 45C

CPU4 Tj Temp: 43C

 

These are much higher than my 28C that my E6600 had.  Looking online, people are reporting some temps like this too for the Q9450...  Kinda odd... Anyone have any ideas if this is normal???

 

 

Here's a pic of the A06 bios screen:

 

Vista 64 workes perfectly with the A06 and Q9450.

I have to agree with dave, with this it does give us more options to upgrade but the bios is still holding us back if we still cant have a extreme.Im confused as why it wont work.Dell do one better open up the bios for us 720 owners.Isnt the 720 still a dell chris??like the 630??Its not like dell hasnt made a ton on this 720 now its at end of life give us the tools if we want them..

quivver,

things to check for cause of high temps:

there isn't too much thermal paste (will cause high temps)

that heatsink fan is tightened down fully

that your fan leads are still connected.

 

great to hear that it you've got the q9450 working, thanks for the news.

 

THANKS DELL FOR THE BIOS UPDATE!!!!!!! REALLY GOOD WORK, KEEP EM COMING.

 

   quivver,

Did you try overclocking with ntune?

    Thats strange, my E8400 reads some crazy temps too!!!

 

   After all these dudes messing up their 630s, bios update,,,,hahahaha

 

I can be very optimistic, but also very realistic.....   

quivver,

 

I have a Q9450 installed on a Gigabyte P35 DS4 and it is also reporting higher than expected temps via the CoreTemp utility. I am not certain that any of the monitoring utilities have the correct parameters (Tjunction?) for the Q9n50 chips yet. My 9450 has been running at 100% for over a week now at a 3.4 Ghz OC with no problems if that helps to ease your mind any.

Thanks for the feedback guys.  I didn't get a change to play around with my system too much last night.  I just left it on for a few hours and checked on it at the end of the night and it was running pretty much the same 45-50C temps.

 

I made sure to use enough Arctic Silver 5 compound on the CPU and tightened the fan on there pretty good...

 

Checking online, there seems to be some other people complaining about the high idle temps on the new line of processors: http://www.overclock.net/intel-cpus/312822-q9450-high-idle-temperature.html

 

I'm not sure if this is a BIOS problem or Nvidia driver problem.  I will try overclocking the system later this evening when I get home.  Any specific setting you guys recommend that is safe to play around with?

Has anyone tried to install this bios update to an xps720. I was on the phone this evening for several hours with Dell Tech and we could not get it to install. Just a series of error messages from windows. I am running XP(sp2).

Bios installed first time with no problems, I am also running XP(SP2) on the XPS720 motherboard with QX6600 processor

I am using Vista x64, updated three machines to A06 with no issues at all.