Maximum PC

Buyer Beware!

I ordered the Dell Studio XPS 9000 on September 13th. I didn't receive it until October 13th (it was repeatedly delayed), and, come to find out, the GTX 260 video card I upgraded to is actually underclocked! Benchmarks rank it about the same as my aging 8800 GTX. If you search Dell's own forums, you'll find that underclocking the cards is typical of Dell.

Seems to be a bit of false advertising when they don't disclose at the time of the order that your brand spanking new video card actually performs like one from the last generation.

Add insult to injury, I'm still waiting on my free Windows 7 upgrade. Again, if you read Dell's forums some have an estimated ship date after Christmas. Heck, they haven't even provided me an estimated ship date yet!!!

I'd suggest to anybody considering a Dell, DON'T. You'll be much better off building your own as I did my last PC.

Well not just that but when you try to upgrade something you find it's nearly impossible to use off the shelf parts.

Now I can't say I've run into that problem in years.
I oversee about 25+ Dells here at work.
Maybe a power supply but pretty much everything else is swapable.

motherboard? case?

And you have little or no overhead typically if your new graphics card sucks down more power than the last one.

Goes back to the power supply...PC Power and Cooling made some Dell compatibles but your options are severely limited.

If you can get a good deal on a Dell go for it but I mostly consider them throwaway computers.

Mostly true. Of course these are all work stations and not gaming computers so video cards are not an issue.
Case? eh... you can throw all of the components of a Dell into a new case with no problem. I've done it with Dells and HPs.
Motherboard? Ya it could be an issue if you try to use the same OS. (Won't reactivate on an OEM with a new MOBO most of the time)

It just gets me worked up when someone comes in crapping on Dell like they are some horrible company. We have used Dell for years and have NEVER had more than a laptop battery recall issue. This includes servers.

Building a gaming computer? Do it yourself if you can but don't expect miracles with a Company like Dell or HP. That's like going down to buy a car from a Ford Dealership and expecting it to run great on the NASCAR circuit.

I'm willing to bet that if the OP hadn't run "bench tests" he would never had even noticed the difference playing the games. I know he will come back saying otherwise, that's ok too. I finally gave up on gaming a few years ago. I did the hole "I'm getting #$! FPS!! WAHOOO!" thing and to tell you the truth? I could run the game one way and get the motherload of FPS and run it another with a lot less and NEVER be able to really tell the difference without having a benchmark program "show" me the difference.
There are a few exceptions of course.

Mostly the FPS thing is a sales gimmick if you ask me but you'll see millions buying into it.

I had a battery recall in my old dell laptop. I was wondering why I couldn't find a replacement battery for my old Inspiron 5000 with Windows 98 SE, 128 MB RAM, .5 GHz PIII, but it had a nice screen.





Ted

you could just clock the 260 back up in the drivers ya know... you have to expect to go through setup frills and hoops when you buy an OEM- either crapware or something else.

There is probably a reason for underclocking the gpu ya know,im thinking the lappy has not got proper cooling for the card and thats why they had to underclock it.Overclocking it could course all sorts of bad and probably void ya warranty.

First off, it's not a laptop. It's a desktop. Secondly, using EVGA's Precision program you can overclock fairly safely. Since you can't adjust the voltages with Precision, there's VERY little chance you'd damage the card.

@OP,

First off, download GPU-z and see what the actual clock speeds are set to. Also, see if it has 192 or 216 shader processors. Then, download EVGA Precision v 1.8.1. Set the GTX 260 to these stock clocks:

576 - Core
1272 - Shaders
1998 - Memory
Then, set the fan speed to 75%. Click Apply, but don't click on Apply at Windows Start Up just yet. We will need more info.

Once you figure out if you have 216 or 192 shaders, we can go from there and overclock the card a bit more. I *think* all the GTX 260's going out now that have 1792Mb of on-board ram have 216 Shader processors, or SP. That computer comes with a 475W Dell PSU. Dell PSU's are pretty decent, so no issues there.

Once you've got it all setup with those two programs, use Furmark to check for temps and stability under load. That Dell case should provide enough airflow for moderate video card overclocking. But we will see once we get there. You need to let us know what temps you're hitting at stock clocks in Furmark using the Stability test with Xtreme mode enabled. If the temps go over 75°, just hit the Esc key to stop it and we will go from there.

The more info you give me, the more help I can give you. So please take note of all the things I've mentioned and report back here. It would help if you posted a screen shot of it.