Dell motherboard - XPS 600

HummuH1 · 26 Jul 2008 at 13:13

I have an old Dell XPS 600 which has a now defunct 7900GTX. Was taking it apart last night and noticed that the MB is SLI ready.

Now, I've always wanted to play with SLI and thought this might be a cheap option to give it a go.

Not sure what the MB is, but given its using a P4 3.4Ghz, is it at all possible that I could do something with the BIOS to allow C2D use and unlock for OC'ing?

Thanks for any help.

Legionaire68 · 26 Jul 2008 at 20:19

Very doubtful about it being able to support C2D as they are only officially supported on nvidia 650/680 onwards I think. If you download 3DMark 06 it checks the system and you should be able to get the Dell motherboard number and google it to see what you've got! But it would mak more sense to get an ATI4850 or 4870 than bother with SLI.

Indy500 · 26 Jul 2008 at 21:20

Nforce 4, so it won't support Core 2 Duo.

sparkey196 · 26 Jul 2008 at 22:05

The Asus P5N32 is based on the nf4 sli chipset and supports c2d. It is just a case of whether there is compatible firmware and whether the VRM can supply a low enough voltage. No and No I expect. Dell wants you to buy a new PC.

HummuH1 · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:18

Thanks guys. Its been sitting there doinbg nothing for ages so going to part it.

Mul · 27 Jul 2008 at 01:25

Not going to happen I'm afraid. The VRM spec will definitely be pre Conroe and no Dell had BIOS support for them until the XPS 700's and Dimension 9200.

If you still feel like having a mess with the XPS 600, bag a used 65nm Pentium D 3.0 or 3.2GHz for £15-20, carry out a BSEL pin mod that'll override them to 1066FSB and around 4GHz and then give SLI a shot. Granted, anything north of 7900's in SLI will be terribly bottlenecked.