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[The Frankman]

Note: If this is the wrong section please move mods, but it involves a gaming setup so I thought PC Gaming-GAF could offer more help.


My sis has a Dell Dimension XPS 630i with a dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT setup, and one of the cards has gone kablooey. It no longer loads 1920x1080 correctly and shows weird garbled character with alot of exclamation marks on the screen, but loads fine in Safe Mode/lower resolutions.

I'm wondering what video card would be the best to buy? She's a self-professed "graphics whore" and plays a shitton of PC games so I figure it's a great opportunity to give her a graphics upgrade. However, it's not like she's playing Skyrim on PC here. She'll play games like Guild Wars and occasionally Dragon Age: Origins, but most of her games are of the BigFish variety. In fact, the NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT ran GW and DA:O almost flawlessly, so I'm thinking she could use a slightly higher-level nVidia card.


Since it's not my computer and I just opened it up for the first time yesterday I'm not too familiar with the specs (still checking it out online). The mobo is a PWA Druid Motherboard A00 4 layer, If it helps here's the wiki for it:

Now no longer available from Dell as a new system purchase, but is in factory outlet. This desktop at one time filled the gap between the media-oriented XPS 420/430 and the high-end XPS 730x. There is no physical difference(s) between the 630 and the 630i. The marketing concept was to use an "i" to designate systems installed with an Intel chipset, and an "a" for systems with AMD-installed chipsets, but since Intel-based chipsets were the only models ever sold, this designation holds little significance. The 630 features a Dell-modified NVIDIA nForce 650i chipset that supports both SLI and CrossFire configurations, but lacks ESA certification (the only ESA-certified component in the 630i is Dell's "Master Input/Output" (or "MIO") printed circuit board).[5] The XPS 630 at one time came standard with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU and dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT graphics cards.

Problems and solutions
There were several issues with the XPS 630 including problems with the chassis fan control, chassis LED lights, and non-shipment of the LightFX 2.0 lightshow control software. Limited PCIe slot configuration (8,8,1,1 unlike OEM Nvidia 650i SLI motherboards which also offer the 16,1,1,1 configuration), constant HDD LED activity, and a reliability issue due to a problem inherent in the Nvidia 650i SLI chipset that can surface when overclocking with 4 or more gigabytes of RAM. The problems resulted in PC PRO revoking their Recommended award for the system.

The July 22, 2009 release of a Softex Media Plug-in has provided some of the features originally advertised in LightFX. BIOS updates were issued to patch the constant HDD LED activity. Some 630i owners have bypassed the aforementioned problems by swapping out the Dell-modified 650i motherboard with OEM motherboards such as the EVGA nForce 780i SLI FTW. The motherboard has 8 lanes wired for each PCIe slot, which can restrict performance if using a single high-performance graphics card. Performance is equivalent to other systems with 650i chipset motherboards when using two graphics cards in SLI mode.

Any advice?

EDIT: This mobo is as shady as fuck.

 

[ConstructMe]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=432590&page=182

 

[DonMigs85]

You could get a GTX 560/570 and use the remaining 8800 as a dedicated PhysX card.

 

[The Frankman]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=432590&page=182

I'll take that as you're saying I should post in that thread... I'll do so then.

You could get a GTX 560/570 and use the remaining 8800 as a dedicated PhysX card.

I was going to just run the 8800 GT solo but that was a no-go. I'll definitely go check out that card right now.

Any advice would be great, since my sis told me she needs to be up and running within a week. So now time is a factor...


Mods, please lock this thread.