Video Card Upgrade for a dell xps700

[Lighty]

As per the title fellas, im so out of touch with PC hardware nowadays, especially when it comes to bloody video cards, there is just so many and the higher the model number is not always the better card (Why do they do that!) anyway I have quad SLI's Nvidia Geforce 7950GX2's in my system and its a bit old hat at the moment. I want to go and buy a new card today from scan as I live near there and dont really want to spend any more than £100 if I can help it. Just want to be able to play a decent game of Crysis etc (My fave game) and have just bought Medal of Honor so wouldnt mind a mess with that.

My problem is not knowing what is compatible with my Mobo, as far as i know my board is the DELL YF432, and I think there were some issues with it in the past regarding what actual nvidia chipset it was. I want to try to buy the best most capable card that will work with my system. I have 4GB Ram and am running 64 bit Windows 7 with dual 24" LCD Monitors. Any help greatly appreciated as its doing my head in trying to find something. I dont know wether to stick with Nvidia because of my chipset and is it physix or something??? Or to go to an ATI HDxxxx card???
Im sure whatever i get it will be a massive improvement over my old 7950's!!
Basically im looking for best bang for my buck as all these yank review sites seem to bang on about.
Cheers

[Lighty]

Just from what I have read and can work out, this card would be a decent one for me and my price range I think?

[B.I.G.]

Thats what ive got in mine after my 9800gtx give up the ghost from what i remember it ran crysis quite well.

[Lighty]

cheers mate im that out of touch with it its crazy, so much choice its hard to choose, anyway just got back and decided to go with the Nvidia (as I have Nvidia Chip etc) I got the 460 GTX on reccomendation of a few mates and combined with the reviews I read it seemed to be the better of the the two i was looking at, the other being the ATI HD 5770. Just installed it now about ot do the drivers etc, am I right in thinking I can use my old vid card to use just for handling Physix or whatever its called? Im sure I read that somewhere.

[Lighty]

Well I have just exhausted 7 straight hours of my fucking time trying to get this piece of shit working now and have gotten nowhere at all!
I have tried every driver from the early 2009 ones right up to the latest beta 260.93 WHQL one and get pretty much the same results.
As soon as I install the driver and reboot my machine becomes laggy and its kind of weird but you can just feel something aint right. Also the first sign is that the sound is all glitchy starting with the windows welcome screen when it plays a noise its all distorted and glitchy, thats when I know the driver has failed again. Then it will either be really laggy to the point where the mouse pointer freezes every few secs or just generally sluggish.
My machine is an Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 with 4GB RAM running Windows 7 64Bit, I have tried all the drivers on guru3d and nvidia's site and every time I have uninstalled the driver then rebooted and run driver sweep to ensure everything is gone. YEt still I cant get this fucker to work right.
Anyone got any ideas or would you be returning it to the store for an exchange?
Cheers

[Lighty]

Got this problem started out as a simple video upgrade but now having tons of problems.
I already started a thread in the hardware section so maybe a mod could move it to here?
http://www.digital-forums.com/showthread.php?t=830777

Any help greatly appreciated
Cheers

[Lighty]

thats another 5 hors gone trying to sort this problem and still nowhere. Has anybody got ANY suggestions at all?? Im afraid I may be missing something here. I know I could try and revert back to 32-Bit Windows but I bought this copy of windows 7 64bit and also it kind of makes my memory useless if I go back so I really dont want to, also this card is definately sold as being compatible with my system specs. If I cant figure this out by tomorrow morning im gonna be taking a trip back to the shop with it and asking for a replacement, I think I'll go with a better brand maybe an Asus board. Anyone think i'll have any problems returning it for the reason that it just isnt compatible with my system/setup?

[B B Leo]

there should be any reason why it dosent work mate..
take it back uninstall any drivers that u put in and put it back in again and reinstall drivers
been a long time from i worked on any pc, but does it need its own power supply?

[Lighty]

Yes it has 2 6 Pin PCI-e power leads required, both of which are in, and my power supply is a 750W good one so I know its ample power to supply it. I have done all the above mate but I think its gonna have to go back to the store where I bought it (Scan) I just hope they accept it as a return as it cost me £162!!!

Thanks for the reply mate

[Sanj[UK]]

You sure its taking in enough power? disconnect your cd/dvd drives and the odd hdd and see if it makes any difference?

Also if you buy a new motherboard tomorrow will it fit in your case? (I know afew of the xps systems had some different setup to ATX something like BTX or something)

[B B Leo]

upgrading any of dell things is always a pain in the ass

[Lighty]

Yes PSU is more than ample the drain on one of these cards is around 185 Watt my PSU is 750 and a very stable solid 750 at that! My motherboard is indeed a BTX form factor but to be honest I fail to see how that even matters. Form factor is just the orientation of the mounting holes on the board and the shape of the board. At the end of the day its still an Nforce 590 Chipset on the board and therefore should not matter. Im convinced its bust to be honest as although ive not messed with video settings and stuff for a few years im normally pretty good at fault finding and this one I cannot solve.
Thanks for suggestions fellas.

[Lighty]

Replaced with new PNY card all is now fine
Thanks

[Lighty]

DOH!!!!!!

Spoke too soon, its just the bloody same, I booted it up thinking I'll know if its the same as the sound on start up is all distorted and hangs half way through and it didnt so I thought great, then I had to go out shopping witht he missus, just come back to have a mess and benchtest etc and the bloody sound card drivers werent installed!!! Soi therte was no sound, I just presumed id missed it and it had booted fine. Im gonna look more into the PSU theory that you mentioned Sanj as I did initially think the same but did some quick sums in my head (Being and engineer) and thought it cant be that surely. Im gonna do a bit more research into the extra power consumption of my PC parts and take that away first.

[Lighty]

I think ive calculated total system power consumption under load to 537Watts -/+ 10W o I should be fine with this power supply really.

[B B Leo]

its more than likely down to dells shite motherboard they have put in it mate

[Lighty]

Actually to be fair the board is pretty good mate, its an Nforce 590 based board that although now almost 5 years old and was built for a core 2 duo.....still supports a Quad extreme 8600 I know this as everyone at dell says it wont work so I borrowed a mates to try it before i bought one and sure enough it runs fine, and I have found a guy on a forum that has been running a quad core in his for 8 months!! Thats not bad goin out of an old system, add to that that its possibly the best looking case out there still and the most silent PC ive ever owned and I think its OK.
BTW strangely enough Nvidia actually released a new 260.99 retail (non beta) driver today of all days, how weird, anyway installed it and its totally cool now, also my benchmarks are up quite a bit too.