XPS 8700 nVidia GTX video card upgrades,

kk well yeah that is the reason why we cut it or else we could just slide it under

wowser my id is same as this site but hythloday how did u connect it if you didnt cut?!?!.! if you do mean you installed a 980..cuz i had a 970 just before 980 and didnt have a problem but the 980s connections from psu are exactly where the sidewall is ... anyways if u did plz post pic ty

Maybe you misunderstood me. I had the MSI 970 Golden Edition before and I could connect the two 8 pin connectors without any problem but with the MSI 980 the card is a little bit longer and the connectors are at the very far end of the card so that was making it impossible to connect the power so that was the reason why I had to cut the metal.

As for the other poster above you, I had no problem installing the card with the metal not being cut but it was both the 8 pins connector that could not be plugged because of that extra metal  and there is the reason why the metal needed to be removed.

Edited

I did post some pics. Look at page 8 of this thread. 

I will see if I can find you on Steam and try to add you to my friend list so maybe we have a few games in common and we could play together online.

cool man i did understand you though lol i was making the same point for the guy with the 960 because i had the 970 gold edition too before but anyways send invite man

i know i did the same because you were the one that told me that newegg would take my 970 back ;) i took that advise and bought the 980 ,only thing i prefered from the 970gold is that it had the protective backplate

cool man i did understand you though lol i was making the same point for the guy with the 960 because i had the 970 gold edition too before but anyways send invite man

Good. I'll do that tonight as I'm at work right now :)

The 980 looks great but that Golden Edition had a really special look and had no problem with it with the 3.5gb 0.5 slowish ram but I just could live with the lie that Nvidia had dumped on us and that is why I made the switch. I know I gave money to Nvidia again but AMD had nothing that I was interested in.

All right so here is my update and its not a good one. I got my motherboard replaced and still im not able to get anything but a black screen for the evga geforce gtx960 sc 2.0. Im going to give up on this one, good thing im still able to return the card.

Well brothers, today i successfully installed a gtx 970 into a Dell Vostro 470.

It took alot of research to do so but it worked great!  a big thanks to the guy that shared his info as well on this site for i took those same steps towards success.

1. Update the dell bios to  A12 on the vostro 470/ xps 8500. very easy to do

2. Updated geforce drivers to prepare for the new 970

3. i swapped the psu with a corsair 750m. it fit nicely in the Vostro 470. it's a little longer than the stock psu but the height and width are dead on. the vostro does not have any interference on the top like the xps does. i choose the 750 watts because next year i plan to build a pc of my own and i will swap that one out. plus, plenty of power for the card aint a bad thing. also, the cable management with a modular is better and i like the cables it came with. now the 2 cables that are permanently attached to the psu is the 24 pin and the 8 pin.  the dell motherboard near the cpu has a 4 pin socket. the 8 pin corsair socket splits into (2) 4 pin sockets down the middle. you just pull them apart. 

4. I bought the evga 970 sc blower style model. I choose this version because the case is kind of small and i dont want to recirculate the hot air inside with the 2 fan acx 2.0 cooling models. the blower style gpu blows the hot air out the back of the dell preventing it from overheating and shutting down. it took a little twisting and turning but it fits nice. a good half inch of space between the gpu and hdd brackets. the pci-e cable that came with the corsair is what i used for its (2) 6 pin power. it's a cable that has one end with an 8 pin socket and the other end has   2  6 pins. very simple. just plug it in the psu under the pci-e socket label and plugged both 6 pins in the gpu.

5. i turned my  pc on and  at this time the computer icons were large all over the screen but fret not, it was my system doing the its new device dectected thing. i just left it alone for 1-2 minutes and it asked me to reboot. click yes. the system will reboot and i  had my pc back and i was ready to game!!

6. first game i choose to play. FAR CRY 4. plays amazing!!!!

I have fitted a MSI GTX960 Gaming 4GB in my XPS8700, it is a great upgrade from gtx745 !

At the moment, referring to reviews/benchmarks the extra 2GB really doesn't make a huge difference...only betting on longer run, games will want more memory so went for 4GB instead...

The only "issue" is with the MSI software. GPU comes with 3 msi software: 3D photo viewer/ msi afterburner and msi gaming app.

XPS8700 will not start "MSI gaming APP", which allow you to choose between:  OC mode/ Gaming mode/ Silent mode. Any idea why my dell cannot open this? (I have also tried the latest software from MSI)

The MSI afterburner software is quite too difficult to use for overclocking the GPU; I tried some setup, only to find black screens and crashes when playing games...It is fine when I reset it to "factory" setting.

Cheers

no clue it works fine for me

Update on this MSI gaming APP issue with my XPS8700.

I submitted the problem to MSI, I was given a new version 4.0.0.5 (don't know if it is officially out), on their  website we can find 4.0.0.2 only, but this has fixed the bug for me....working now !

So this MSI GTX 960 2GD5 (non-OC) should work well with the XPS 8700 (mid-summer 2013 release)? 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127842

I was considering a 750Ti, but for $40 more, this has many more Stream Processors,1024 vs the usual 640 for these type of cards, and according to Passmark, literally stomps in the ground my currently installed MSI Radeon 7770 (PMD1GD5), and for that matter, the EVGA GeForce 750 Ti variants. 

As long as I know it's going to run, and one of the reviewers claimed to be running an Alienware X51 with only a 330W PSU, power doesn't seem to be an issue. I'm still running the stock 460W PSU. 

Was looking at the OC versions of the GTX 960, looking back in this thread, these may not be good for me, as I don't want to upgrade the PSU while under warranty. 

System specs, just in case needed:

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/pYRATbsd2bzB3SOyAHLgKyV

Thanks for any feedback! The XPS 8700 is a great PC, the next upgrade will be the i7-4790K 'Devils Canyon', that adds only 4 more watts. 

Cat

GTX 960 should be fine with the OEM PSU, even the OC versions.

Dell shipped a GTX 660 with the OEM PSU, and it pulls more power than the GTX 960s can.

If you upgrade to the 4790K, let us know how it goes.

Dan-H, thanks for your reply!

Ordered the MSI model that I linked above, as my current card is of the same brand, so is one of my notebooks with 1st gen i5, MSI is a quality brand. 

Glad to know that the OC or SC models would work with the PSU, yet I also had to consider the space I have. A long story short, have a condition that would cause issues with me working in too cramped of a space. The card that I ordered isn't that much longer than the one installed, whereas some of the OC ones were monster sized ones, having no space to work with & no one reliable to assist, this just seemed to be the best option (for me). 

Out of all of the GTX 960's I looked at, this one is as close looking to the reference card as I've seen. 

Came with a game bundle also, however I purchased it to run powerful virtual machines on. 

Thanks for your assistance & hopefully the card will be here my mid week, as I paid for 3 day shipping, otherwise it would take 10 days to get here. 

Will update the Topic after the card is installed & yes, as long as I'm on this Earth, the i7-4790K is next!

Cat

did you plug both the 6 and 8 pin connectors?

hi guys

can anyone give me a step by step guide to what you have to do to upgrade the video card. I'm going bonkers, i upgraded my psu to cx750m, i bought a  evga gtx960 sc and i got the black screen. I returned that card and got a gtx970 and still black screen ;(. I have the latest bios a10 and have enough power to support the card. i have to be missing something but i don't know what it is. my dell xps8700 came with the gt720 and the weird part is that the computer does not display anything unless that card is connected.

this is what i did.

went to control panel found the gt720 drivers and uninstalled them. turned off the computer, removed the gt720 and replaced with gtx960. the computer boots normally and i was able to use splashtop to see my desktop. the computer does not detect the card. display drivers changed to intel hd 4600 and even if i connect the hdmi to the onboard graphics i still get a black screen.

has anybody upgraded this dell xps8700 model succesfully?