Hello Everyone!

[ShoTyme]

Hello
After many hours of searching for answers for ways to upgrade and change my computer I have come here to this forum.
I have a Dell xps 730x h2c with a i7 965.
I bough this a few days before dell quit making it, Had I known they were going to quit this machine I would not have bought it.
I am hoping this forum can help me make some changes to it that work the way there supposed to.
I have the latest bio's in it that dell has, they were installed when i got it. it came with a 500gb hd and a ati 4870x2 graphics card, and 6 gb memory.
All in all it has been a pretty good machine, I just installed 2 EVGA GTX480 in sli and windows7 pretty much of the rest is stock.

For fun I would like to overclock the processor,memory and pci-e lanes to the max for a benchmark.Alos Does anyone have some bios they found or made that can make full use of this board so you could use the new 980x processor.
I have not been able to come up with a stable setup beyond 3.8 ghz
I Got this as a benchmark so far doing it on my own 3DMark Score P29241
with a cpu score of 23741 and gpu score of 31688. both score seem quite low for similar compared systems.

If you could direct me to the correct strings to find the info, or if you have the super setup for this machine, I would appreciate the help.

This is my primary gaming machine right now, so all the heavy overclock are for benchmark score only,and also to get my new video cards up to speed (there not any faster than my old single card yet )

[Aivas47a]

Welcome ShoTyme! You've come to the right place for Dell modding/upgrading, to the extent it can be done. You've got a real powerhouse of a machine there!

I'm not aware that anyone has ever successfully modded or written their own bios for a Dell machine, so as far as support for hexacore or other newer processors, I'm afraid you'll have to rely on Dell for bios updates. Unfortunately Dell is very bad about providing this kind of ongoing support for their products (a big reason why many of us former Dell owners have gone the DIY route).

As for benchmarking scores of your GPUs, I don't know that you want to do much overclocking of those dual 480s given the heat they produce at factory settings, but I would expect your GPU benchmark scores to improve as Nvidia continues to optimize their SLI drivers. It's still pretty early days for that and as you probably know, SLI performance is heavily dependent on driver support (crossfire too). Also the ATI cards (of which I'm a fan) are killers when it comes to benchmarking, so even if you don't see a lot of improvement in Vantage the dual 480s should still provide higher FPS in actual games.

3.8 is a pretty good overclock for a Dell machine, but if you'll remind me what bios voltage settings are available to you (and let me know what settings you used for the 3.8 run), I would be glad to offer some suggested tweaks that you might want to try.

Finally, I would just plant a seed in the back of your mind that, for full-on overclocking and bios upgrade support, you might want to think about some day swapping out the factory motherboard for a retail board. Unfortunately that's the only way you're really going to get the kind of flexibility I think you're looking for.

[CHSIsupplier]

Welcome to the forum ShoTyme! I don't have anything to add to what Aivas said. I just wanted to reiterate that you do have the option of getting a retail ATX mobo to put in there. The retail stuff is far less restrictive than the Dell stuff. All in all though, it looks like you've got a monster of a machine anyway!

[ShoTyme]

Hello Again!
Thanks for the input, I have OC'd my machine too 4.1 GHz but it isnt stable, I am quite sure that is from the cooling system not handeling the job for me, It will run a bench mark for 10 to 15 minutes then lock up, and the gtx480's have not run as hot as most people say, they run about 89c during test right now on air, but i am not getting the performance I want from them yet,seems others have been getting much higher benchmarks with same cards,dont know if it is my mobo bios problem or just a bad overall design in the mobo in the first place.
I had been a dell fan for a long time before this machine,I still have a xps 600 maxed out with 4 raptors and a 840ee processor and 2 xps 720 h2c one with a 840 ee and one with a qx9650 and dual gtx 8800 and 3 raptors, LOL i have so much dell crap I should sell

[Aivas47a]

If your dual 480 benchmark numbers seem to be lower than others with a comparable setup, be sure to double check that SLI is in fact enabled. Sometimes gremlins in the system can mysteriously cause SLI to be disabled and you may not even know it unless you notice the performance drop.

If that's not the problem, the other thing worth checking is whether both cards are actually performing properly. Try pulling out the cards and running a benchmark with each one as your sole GPU and see if the results are comparable. You could have one defective card and need to RMA it. Don't even get me started on Nvidia quality control -- I experienced something like five dead Nvidia GPUs on a variety of machines before I swore off the @#$%&^* company!

[ShoTyme]

I will try separate tests on them, i have not tried to pull one out compleatly,I only transfered them to different pci-e slots and tried them, BTW is there a certain slot they should be in?.
also i did try the benchmark test with sli disabled it changes the results about 30 percent,that said though i didnt try them 1 at a time in the machine.

[ShoTyme]

well I did tests on the card separately and the virtually the same, both have a 3dmark vantage of about 19500, i did however switch the cards to the outside pci-e lanes this time and got a benchmark of 35860 quite a jump from 29241.
I guess now i have the question, are not all 3 pci-e lanes x16?

[Red_Devil_24]

Originally Posted by ShoTyme

I guess now i have the question, are not all 3 pci-e lanes x16?

Welcome to the forum.
I did a quick search on the dell website and the only thing I could find is that the manual say to install the 2 GPU in the 2 outer slot.
Your result seem to suggest that only two of them are 16x.

[Aivas47a]

Originally Posted by ShoTyme

well I did tests on the card separately and the virtually the same, both have a 3dmark vantage of about 19500, i did however switch the cards to the outside pci-e lanes this time and got a benchmark of 35860 quite a jump from 29241.
I guess now i have the question, are not all 3 pci-e lanes x16?

I think you solved the problem! I had not thought of that as the potential culprit but it makes a lot of sense -- typically you have to use two specific slots on a mobo in order to have full 16x throughput for two cards at the same time.

[phillywood]

Welcome!

[UncleWilley]

ShotTyme, WELCOME to the forum!! Hope you hang around.

[MoneyGuyBK]

First off a bleated welcome to glad to have you here at RS
As for your Qs, I think they have been well answered by our experts..... however I will be bold enough to add the following:

1. To OC your CPU (you will not do much with your current almost-retail Mobo, in the past Dell completely Dell'ed their MoBos) .... take off the cooling shroud, completely clean the top of the CPU and the contact point for your H2C cooloer .... then use a 'quality' paste such as AS5 from Arctic Silver .... make sure to apply per instructions here .... and then tighten the scews, run the machine for a week or two to allow the paste to completey spread/cure before attempting a higher than OEM overclock.

2. As for your GPUs, confirming what Red Devil has said, install them in the two slots at the top of the MotherBoard (in Dell config) which will mean you must skip the slot closest to the CPU.
Additionally, if you decide to install a third GPU (highly Gutsy) please PM Dell_Chris_M (a moderator/Liaison) ... I remember he posted a thread on Dell Forums stating that he installed three nVi GPUs in his 730x machine (none H2C model) a while back. I'm sure he could tell you what to do and point you to his thread.

Hope this helps.... please remain active here with us; we will definitely love to help; hopefully you could tell all your friends/relatives about us and have them stop over for any tech questions they might have






Peace