XPS 8700 GPU upgrade

I'm not sure why you would want an OEM part as an upgrade.  They would be overpriced.  I would go with the retail equivalent HERE which is the GTX 650.  The Dell 460 watt PSU works with a lot of high-end video cards that use a lot more power than any of these.  It does not matter which 6-pin power cable you use. Uninstall the AMD or Dell drivers and software and then remove the HD 7570.  Install the Nvidia card and install the latest drivers from their website. 

Kelbear thanks for the very kind of advise!

I need a card with DisplayPort, as my monitor has HDMI/DP & VGA, have a notebook hooked up to the HDMI. There are other cards which does have DP, can you advise me on one?

Yes, Newegg is my favorite upgrade partner, I've been dealing with them since 2009. Get all of my software plus some hardware on the site.

Thanks for replying!

Cat

Kelbear1, thanks a lot for assisting me!

I need to save for another month, this cost just a little more than expected. Am expecting a rebate from ASUS for the monitor I bought, that will help. On that purchase, I shot myself in the foot by getting a monitor w/out a DVD-D port, or 2 HDMI, I didn't realize until later that there are DP to HDMI cables. Having a monitor with 2 HDMI inputs would have given me a greater selection of cards to work with.

Have you or do you know anyone who has used that MSI card (the 7770) on the XPS 8700? I ask because MSI's official response is that the card requires 500W.

It doesn't help when shopping for these cards, the reviews are lumped into one for a particular model. I realize this is commonplace at Amazon, but have began seeing it more & more on the Newegg site as well.

Getting all of my components to surpass the 7 mark on WEI can be a challenge, especially the video. I'm stuck at 6.9 on the 7570 & 6.7 on the Intel HD 4600. All other components are 7.7 or better.

Cat

Dell actually approved the GTX 660 for the Dell XPS 8700 which uses 75% more power than the HD 7770. This card only uses 80 watts which is why it just needs the one 6-pin power connector.  The XPS 8700 has two of these connectors for video cards that use much more power.  It does not require a 500 watt power supply.  I have an MSI HD 6450 which states it needs a 400 watt power supply and I use it on a Dell with just a 220 watt unit.  Manufacturers greatly state requirements that far exceed what is actually needed.

I would not be too concerned about the WEI score.  It does not really have much value unless you're actually using these components to their potential.  An HD 7770 may not score above 7.7, but an HD 7790 probably would.  However, if you're not using the potential of the cards for gaming or video editing, etc., then it really does not matter much.  

I don't do any of the video editing or gaming that the majority of those who uses these cards for, but I do run virtual machines, sometimes 2 at once. However running 2 leads to loss of video quality, so I usually use just run one. And I'm considering doing some work for Foilding@Home again for Stanford University, GPU power is critical to this app or enhances it. However, I don't want an overly huge electricity bill in the process.

Though Intel HD 4600 graphics scores a little lower, it's actually a better choice when watching videos, such as YouTube, Hulu, VLC & other online video than the AMD Radeon 7570 (OEM) is. The option to use AOD is there, pre-installed, but I've never used the software, in my opinion, having the proper card is better than overclocking, which has it's own dangers, including possibly overheating my MB.

Back when I first bought computers, which were Dells & I have lots of experience working on older models, XPS was considered top of the line & to many, it was only a dream to own one. Fast forward 10 years (September 2013), the configuration that I got for $699.99 has the 2nd or 3rd fastest i7, 12GB of DDR3 1600 RAM, SATA III HDD, 6 USB 3.0 ports, who'd have thought it possible?

The only upgrade I've made so far is the 120GB Samsung 840 EVO, strangely for a $100 SSD that's slower than it's larger siblings, is the highest rated component on my system, a 7.9. The 128GB Crucial M4 that it replaced was rated at only 7.1, oddly the same on a SATA II Toshiba it's in now. The Samsung 840 EVO is lower cost, but a very fast SSD.

BTW, that Geforce GTX 645 I was looking at sold for $82.01 on eBay, after shipping. I did read the specs & reviews, does seem to be a hot running card & many replaces it with something better & cooler running.

Hopefully soon I can get a good card that will meet my needs. This thread isn't over.

Thanks for your continued advise!

Cat

Kelbear1, it took me a couple of weeks to scrape up the money & I ended up getting the card you recommended today. $99.99 after rebate! There's no better card for the money & I did extensive searching.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127687

Though my personal favorite is NVIDIA, all of the cards I seen uses a lot more power, in turn generating more heat, which may in turn require at least another cooling fan. The XPS 8700 powered by the i7-4770 runs very cool to be such a powerful chip, without a lot of fans installed.

I was also concerned about MB temps, which surely would raise with a NVIDIA 600 series card.

There were some mixed reviews of the card, some of the negatives I had to sort through were really about slowness of rebates, rather than the card itself & crashing on overclocking, which I won't be doing. This is a $100 card, not a $300-600 one, I feel that the defaults will be plenty for me. I just wanted more than what the OEM AMD Radeon 7570 can give. Plus unlike some of the other higher level cards that Dell offers on the XPS 8700, mine has no DP output, which I need.

A final question, should I go with AMD's drivers or MSI's? I've had "Live Update" on a gaming laptop built by MSI, it didn't benefit me, though the Intel Driver Update Utility did & I grab my GPU updates direct from NVIDIA for the discrete 425M installed. MSI tends not to have the latest drivers, or this was the case with their brand of laptop anyway. Even when it was brand new.

What do you (or any other community member) think as to where I get the drivers? Again, I won't be overclocking the unit, so I don't see the need for "afterburn"

Many Thanks for the advise given in this thread to date.

This XPS 8700 is the best PC I've had, no way could I have built one with the same specs. I got it for $699.99 at a major warehouse ($350 savings), the CPU alone would be $309 at retail price. Though I didn't care for Windows 8 & was fortunate to have a copy of Windows 7 for clean install on hand. 8.1 was no better on this PC, though it runs on the 2011 model MSI mentioned above as though it was written for it.

Windows 7 is just an all around reliable OS & it'll be even harder to wean users from it than XP today. Hopefully SP2 will be released soon, which is supposed to have native USB 3.0 support. It's weird, even though MS seems to be distancing themselves from Windows 8, according to various articles, they haven't exactly bent over backwards to keep their bread & butter customers (those of us on Windows 7) happy.

Oh well, hopefully the GPU will arrive this week, will let the community know who it goes as soon as it gets installed.

Cat

You should get your drivers directly from the AMD website.  Download the latest driver which should be version 13.12.   

I run Windows 7 Ultimate and would not ever consider Windows 8.  We'll see what happens next year when Windows 9 comes out.  

Thanks again, Kelbear1! I had a hunch that would be the thing to do, had it been a NVIDIA card wouldn't have asked.

7 Ultimate is great, I have 7 Pro, actually a Windows Anytime Upgrade license from Home Premium, that I was able to transfer from a dead PC, since it was no longer being used. Had to call MS to activate it though.

At the time (late 2009), Windows 7 was new & I still was using XP Pro for things of importance, such as tax returns, so until SP1 was released for 7, XP Mode (a Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate feature) filled a gap for me. Plus Home Premium can only use up to 16GB RAM, though I'm currently running 12GB, I see that doubling by years end to 24GB. Will install a 16GB (8GB x2) set in the slots where the two 2GB sticks are during a Black Friday sale, or shortly afterwards.  

Windows 8 did initially show a lot of promise, as I was a beta tester from the 1st day of the Consumer Preview on 02/29/12. Actually in some respects, the betas were better than the finished product. I only bought 8 Pro because of the promos, one was $40, the other was $15, due to a laptop purchase late that summer for my granddaughter that qualified me for the extra discount.

However, at $199, no way would I consider 8 Pro. I bought the XPS 8700 for the hardware, not for the OS. There was little doubt that the installed OS was going to become a secondary dual boot. Actually I prefer Linux Mint or Ubuntu over Windows 8 & have it installed on 3 machines. Ubuntu is coming out with a new LTS release (5 year support) in April, it'll be installed beside of 8 on the secondary HDD that I also use for Data.

As to this GPU, I see it to be a great addition to what's already a decent machine. From at what I've seen on the inside, looks like Dell has finally ditched a lot of their special connectors needed for various components, this makes for easier customization.

Will post the final results, right here.

Cat

Kelbear1, you're the greatest!!!!!!

This MSI R770 GHz edition (1GB GDDR5) Rocks!

Went from a WEI score of 6.9 on both graphic scores (lowest on system) to a whopping 7.5!

CPU-7.7

RAM-7.7

Graphics (Both)-7.5

HDD (SSD)-7.9

Would have posted the actual WEI, but couldn't size it down. Here's the GPU-Z shot, if it'll allow that.

This is much better & faster in every category over the OEM AMD 7570. One question, what does the PCI specs mean?

It reports the GPU supports PCI-Express x16 v3.0, but is currently running at PCI-Express x16 v1.1. Am I losing real performance, or is it a motherboard thing? I'm not going to upgrade the MB to squeeze the last droplet of performance out of it.

And BTW, I installed the drivers straight from AMD, the MSI software besides not being current, has a lot of unneeded junk on it, some junk software.

Temps are good at 28C.

Again, Many Thanks for assisting me with this!

Cat

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/LwThORYyYVXRM62TUxmWfpm