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August 15th, 2010 21:00
E1705 Fastest CPU to Upgrade To?
I have the T2700 in my Inspiron E1705 currently. Does anyone know what the fastest CPU this thing will take is? I suppose I could chat with Dell but I thought I'd ask here.
I tried the Intel T7400 and get an error after POST and decided I'll be selling it. So what will actually work properly?
Thanks
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ejn63
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August 16th, 2010 07:00
The T7200, T7400 and T7600 are the three fastest CPUs that system will support. The T7400 should have worked (make sure it's not an engineering sample or a remarked CPU).
jbiz
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August 16th, 2010 08:00
How do you know if its an engineering sample or remarked CPU?
When you say worked, I can verify, the processor does indeed work. You can boot into Windows and the OS does see it and configure for it. It prompted me to update the Windows score and it was higher.
However, overall the system seemed to run a little "off", but that might have been for other reasons. Not only that, but you get an error message about unsupported hardware if you try to flash the BIOS, and then there is that very annoying "Unable to update Microcode" after POST.
I am really questioning some of the advice I'm seeing here and on notebookforum.com that is recommending people get these CPUs for these laptops. I do not think they are supported and people are just plugging them in because the socket configuration is the same. Just because it fits doens't mean it will work fully.
I am going to find out what Dell says is the fastest CPU this thing will truely support.
ejn63
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87.5K Posts
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August 16th, 2010 08:00
Dell doesn't support CPU upgrades, so the best you'll get is the fastest CPU that was SHIPPED with these systems. Before upgrading the CPU, did you flash the latest BIOS?
Engineering samples are marked ES. Remarked CPUs are harder to spot - best is to buy from a reputable vendor with a fixed place of business - i.e., NOT Ebay.
jbiz
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August 16th, 2010 09:00
It has the latest BIOS. If I try to re-flash it, I get an error message "unsupported hardware". The operating system sees the CPU and everything works fine however.
I think there are more than one version of these E1705 with different motherboards. I think there was a newer one that came out after mine that officially supports the Core 2 Duo chips. I don't think mine does.
I am leaning towards putting it up on eBay and then going to the outlet and getting an XPS system that supports Core 2 Duo, 64-bit, 4GB (or more of RAM). However it's difficult to justify as this E1705 runs pretty well. It's just not much of a gaming machine.