Great post, pretty much reflects what has been said already, and I agree 100%. Dell had a huge opp here with the gaming crowd, if they take the initiative and do the right thing!

-Sage

Respectfully,

I can overclock my XPS 600 Extreme Edition 955 just by going into BIOS and selecting 3.73 or 4.0GHz.  So your statements are mostly true.  You don't have total control over overclocking, but Dell HAS provided it in the past, for a PRICE.

Later,

Bub

I think this is exactly why they bought Alienware. You can tweak them all you want but if you buy a Dell gaming system you will have very little control.
I guess if it is not common knowledge for you then I'm sorry but for a lot of us it is.
I bet most of you did not know Dell very slightly underclocks systems usually 1MHz or 2MHz per multiplier for added stability. Even my XPS 600 had this feature.

Now some of you are willing to risk running OC'd and the pitfalls associated with doing it; me I'm for 100% stability and that may be why I elected to change from the XPS line back to Precision for my home systems.
I can swap video cards and RAM and 'act' like I'm working on my box but it won't affect its stability.
What Dell should do is market WAY BETTER on the XPS line so there are no confusions with Alienware, Falcon or Voodoo or whatever good assembler out there you choose.

---

@test4echo101 wrote:

Those who have bought any of the Dell XPS series systems expecting it to Do what they want, will be disappointed.
Which brings up the question:
Why on earth would any of you purchase these extremely expensive systems when its common knowledge (and has been for years and years) dell isn't going to give you the control you want?

---

Beg to differ on the "common knowledge". Common to one like yourself in the business for 17 years, but for people who like fast computers but dont wanna read boring tech sites every single day, it isnt so common.

Had i possessed this " common knowledge", I would not have purchased a gimped X-Fi card. It never occured to me that buying a Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic w/Dolby 5.1 meant I was getting a special version from Dell that has had features disabled on purpose. They should take the " X-Fi XtremeMusic" part out, then call it a Sound Blaster Dell OEM X-Fi .

Of course, this forum and your post will help it become more "common", but I'd say a good chunk of people dont know how "untuned" OEM parts can be.

 

Hi BubBowen

"I can overclock my XPS 600 Extreme Edition 955 just by going into BIOS and selecting 3.73 or 4.0GHz."

You make my point exactly about how easy it is for dell to allow us "regular" XPS 600 owners to have a BIOS with ALL options restored to there original defaults.

You have the same board, probably same revision. The only difference?
Dell crippled our BIOS while they allowed yours a bit of headroom. (And not much at that)
Have you tried running Ntune on your system?
Doesn't work does it.

ChrisM tried to blame Nvidia in another post I had:

(What I said) Nvidia has made Ntune to work with all its Nforce boards. This should include ours.

(ChrisM's statement) Have you contacted Nvidia and asked them if they had OEM (original equipment manufacturer) hardware in mind when they were writing the nTune software?

Of course they didn't!!!! They probably didn't assume Dell had ripped the guts out the Nforce4 SLI 16x Default Bios rendering it unable to run the Ntune software.

Its all just insane.
The more people who know its insane, the better.

Message Edited by test4echo101 on 08-25-200602:40 PM

CCrusher ,

I am sorry you didn't know about Dell's slimy marketing strategy.

I assumed that most people who are ready to drop $3000+ on system would certainly either .yahoo or .google reviews about what they are about to purchase.
If they had, maybe half of dell's sales would have went to other sources for parts.
For example:
You configure your XPS with a SB X-FI sound card. You expect to get just that.
Whatever Creative.com has listed as the X-FI's feature set you would expect to get....right?
Not when dealing with dell. Dell doesn't want to buy 3 or 4 differnet versions of the X-Fi card.
So what they do is cripple (reduce) the functionality of the card so that a lame XPS 400 and higher end XPS 700 will both be happy.
for the significantly cheaper system this is great news. For the more expensive system, well you feel like you got ripped off.
Its about the lowest common denominator. If dell plans to use the same parts in higher end systems and cheaper systems, they configure the part so that the lower end system will be accomodated.
Many times this means the higher end product doesn't get the "BEST" iteration of the card or mainboard.
If that weren't the case, you'd be able to download creatives latest drivers and use those instead of dells drivers.
You'd have a hardware decoder built into the X-FI's chipset, instead relying on Sonics software implementation of Dolby 5.1. Forget DTS because Sonic at this time doesn't support DTS.

Same can be said for the mainboard...etc....

If enough people complain and enough of the truth comes out, Dell will NOT have an XPS 800.
No one will buy them.

I for one will (unless dell decides there are being hammered by negative reviews and FIX these issues for us)
be telling everyone on every forum I can to stay away from Dell XPS systems.

They need to allow us to do what we want with them. Not cripple just about every aspect of every part they install in the XPS.

From the sound cards, Main boards, cables, Form factor, power supplies....etc...you name it. They lock down, reduce functionality, on it all.

Its really sad.

A very expensive mistake for most people.

Let me just edit this post to say this:

I don't expect Dell to accomadate everyone.
I am only speaking from the perspective of an XPS "Ultimate gaming rig" purchaser.

I think Dell really needs to differenciate between a casual Dimmension/Inspiron user from a person who forked out BIG BUCKS for the XPS line.

WE DESERVE to have what we ask for as long it can be accomplished without a hardware swap.

IE.....Give us the darn BIOS we want. The one that places NO RESTRICTIONS on FSB, SPD timmings, Voltage regs, etc....

Message Edited by test4echo101 on 08-25-200603:54 PM