HOW-TO: Upgrade your 9300 with the Ultra or 7800 "Photo Guide" - Page 45

That's correct although you could force it to fit. Anyway, my views of it previously was that there was no BIOS support. Maybe do a search to figure out some more information.

Random BSOD Faults??? Driver errors

I did this upgrade in 2005 and I am now experiencing random crashes on my computer. Firstly it was due to w29n51.sys cracking up which i subsequently updated and now I just get the dreaded BSOD with a stop error number.

When i reboot it takes me to microsoft to tell me that there was a stop error (der!) and that it was due to one of my drivers. I have since erased the machine to kill off any chance of it happening through cruddy drivers and it still happens.

It happens about once per day which is annoying because you might be cruising doing something and then bang. Its BSOD time!

Has anyone else had this problem?
Has anyone got any hints on fixing this?

I don't want to just sell my computer as parts because its been the best machine I have ever had.

Thanks
aquapan

*** UPDATE ***

I found on other forums that this was likely to be a ram issue. I found a ramtester and run it to find lots of holes in my ram. No wonder my machine was freaking. I took it to a laptop shop to get more ram and put in some fresh samsung. Works like a dream again The techie reckons that my front side bus is running way overclocked and this is cooking my ram. I don't know if that true because I dont know where to find the specs on that but it might be. I run this machine for days on end when i go nuts on rendering so maybe that cooked my ram? Anyway... the main thing is is that its back to blitzing speeds.... I LOVE DELL

Hi guys, this is my first post here!

After reading 59 pages of this topic I still could not find definite answer to my questions :

If I have I9300 BIOS rev. A05 do I need to flash bios to XPS2 after upgrading to GeForce 7800Go GTX ? Or i9300 BIOS a05 still could run 7800 GTX ? Some people are saying that it will run but won't use the full power of 7800GTX some of 'em saying that it won't run at all.

Now, If 7800Go GTX will be recognized on my I9300 with bios rev. A05 and it runs on full power do I need the XPS 130Watt power brick ? Or I can still use my original 90 W one ? I presume that electricity consumption should go up with upgrade to 7800 Go GTX so I am not sure if 90W one will be sufficient.

And the last one - can somebody tell me where I can find 7800Go GTX ? On ebay there is only one with $369 price tag + $50shipping. Is that a reasonable price?

Thanks everyone and I apologize if these questions were already answered ....

Yes, you need the 130W power brick regardless. I will say this again, I had 2 130W power bricks, only 1 would let me run the 7800gtx at full speed with the 9300 a05, however both worked fine with the xps gen 2 hacked bios. Therefore, while you will almost definitely be able to use your computer with the 7800gtx and 9300 a05 bios, you may not be able to utilize the 7800gtx's full speeds depending on your revision of powerbrick, and no I don't remember which revision worked and which didn't

In terms of all 7800GTX prices I guess around $350 isn't bad. I think a few come up for around $275-$300 from time to time though. If you compare it to other cards on the market though, its a ludicrous price.

Oh and plus $50 shipping. Pssh, no freaking way. I'd rather use an ATI x300.

Hey guys! Just wanted to ask you if there is a way to buy original parts directly from dell?

I found a thread here that has links in it to the Dell parts Direct or something but you have to be a member(tech ?) to login ?


I just wanted to buy some parts to mod my 9300 ....Something from XPS 2 I guess . THere are some parts (cases , covers .... ) on Ebay but ZI thought maybe there is some other place .

Depends on which parts. I would rarely buy a processor, GPU, or the like from Dell considering the price. If you want the new parts to be under warranty though, I suppose you will have to. I'd probably just keep my old parts (if I was timid) so that I could replace them to redeem my warranty.

Well , right now I am looking for GPU but I don't know the price for that from Dell.... In the long run I might need parts like base, LCD cover maybe some small parts and some of them are not always present on Ebay ....

I thought they would have some more parts on their website under Service .. Well it looks like I will have to give them a call....

Better place to get the cases supplies. Dell charges alot more than you think. Alot more. I wanted the Pentium M 780 chip for my 9300. Dell wanted 900. I got it for 225 on ebay.

http://www.parts-people.com/

Bare with me im a big time noob. I see this has been talked about for a couple years but ive just stumbled on this mod. I have a 9300 2.0Ghz, 1 gig RAM, 6800 go, etc etc. I love this laptop and it works pretty good for gaming. Does adding the 7800 gtx and overclocking it make that big of a difference? If it does, if i get the 7800, power brick and battery, does anyone have the bios flash? older sites have a dead link for it. it looks like there is one bios flash to trick the latop into thinking its a xps2 and another bios flash to overclock the 7800? is that right? if everyone on this post is thinking "ohhh jeeeez" i appologize, but this mod intrigues me. if nothing else maybe a good project to occupy my time for a few days. thanks

Yes, it makes a HUGE difference; with the 7800gtx all of a sudden you can play games like hl2, cs:s, doom3 at native resolution all on high settings; its pretty nice. As for the bios flash, as long as you have the latest inspiron bios, you *may* not need it at all since for some (including myself), the 9300 a05 bios works with the 7800gtx

thx for the reply. ill look into the a05 bios. i guess thats on dell's website? also, do i need a bios flash to overclock the 7800gtx? it looked like some of the older webpages on this subject had one. do you overclock your cpu or is the 2.0 Ghz good enough? thx

Yeah the 7800GTX will flat out bury the 6800. If you plan on keeping the 9300 for another couple years the upgrade will be a worthy one. They are pricey but the performance is killer. Here is the thread on overclocking the video card. It's an easy flash job. Anyone can do it.

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread185501.html

so let me make sure im not oversimplifying this. i get the 9 cell battery, 130 watt power brick, install a 7800 gtx, flash the bios from that thread you gave me to overclock the card and im in business? theres nothing more to it than that? they were discussing different cards on that thread, just out of curiosity is the 7800 gtx the only card i can use to bump up my 9300?

Yup Yup. Unless the AO5 bios doesn't recognize the 7800GTX. You may have to find the Modded bios as Atwood stated but I'm sure someone here has it. You're not oversimplifying it. It really is that simple. I had a 9300 and did the mod.

Is anybody willing to trade 7900 GS Go for 7800Go GTX ?

At end of the week I will have GeForce 7900Go GS 256Mb GP. I will attempt to put it into my I9300 ( I found some articles about Gen2 mod that people were able to stuff this card in) so I will try this since lappys have almost identical chassis.


I am gonna have some more parts from I9400 to the end of this week so possibly will replace my regular crappy screen with shinny , glossy super -drupper WXGA + blah blah screen

P.S. Sorry for posting it here since I am not allowed yet to post in Buy/Sell thread.

ok im going to order the stuff and if anyone has the modded bios for the 9300 i would appreciate it, in case i end up needing it when i do all this. thx

7900 GS will Not work in a 9300, XPS gen2, Or XPS M170. It will fit but your 9300 won't know what it is. There is no support for it in the 9300 bios.

Hi there, Did you Flash your I9300 BIOS? before installing and updating the drivers on your video card?