HOW-TO: Upgrade your 9400/E1705 with the 512MB 7900 GTX "Photo Guide" - Page 11

I cant see it too. Havent seen it work since I joined here a few weeks ago.

Another successful upgrade here as well from the X1400. Thank you very much mbosys!

My X1400 3DM06 score was only a measly 836! With the new 7900GS, I got to 3527. Is that a good score though? Im using the latest XG Mobileforce driver and no oc'ing.

hmm.. pictures arnt working

My stock 7900GS get around 6200+ assume you are running 3Dmark 05

Sorry forgot to say that I was using 3dm06 to get that score. On 3dm05 I got 6396 with no overclocking.

I bought a card off of E-bay that was supposed to be a dual pipe 7900GS to replace my X1400, I got it for $160. I thought that I would use this thread to help me trim the needed plastic to make it fit in my E1705 and that it should be plug and play per prior posts. I thought I would be happy with a 7900GS 'cuz I wouldnt have to mess with the XPS BIOS or a 130w power supply. Once I was done installing it would not recognize the card, in hardware profiles just said unidentified VGA adaptor. I tried downloading all available drivers I could find and nothing worked. I even updated my BIOS from dell to A07. I did a cold restart and F12 jumped to the Boot Menu. Under hardware profiles it had my GPU listed as a Geforce GO 7950GTX 512mb. I started up windows XP, downloaded the Dell stock 7950 driver for the XPS and it recognized it right away. I ran 3Dmark06 and it saw it as the 7950GTX w/ the 7950GTX driver (got a 4250). Is this right??? I am still using the 90w power supply and the only thing I have noticed is once while playing PREY after I was done, I realized I was on battery power and that the green light on my power block had gone out. When I unplugged it and plugged it back in, it worked fine. My temperature while gaming was significantly cooler than with my single pipe X1400 POS. What are everyones thoughts on my situation? Are some of the older posters still reading this thread? I would like to hear from them. Subsuquent 3dmark06 tests have been as high as 4500 but in the details section for my test it says: GPU: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX 6 MHz / 300 MHz Is this right for my clock speeds? Am I getting that good of performance out of my card while its underclocked that low and is it because of my power supply?


Dell 9400/E1705: Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0 Ghz) | 512 MB Go 7950 GTX | 17" WUXGA | 2 GB DDR 2 (667) | 80 GB HD 7.200 RPM | 8x cd/dvd burner W/dbl layer | 90w Power | Bluetooth wireless card | Dell 1500 WiFi card with 802.1n draft | Windows XP Pro SP2 | 80w 9cell battery

You need a power supply... dont even bother with overclocking etc until you do.

I dont konw what the scores of a 7950 in 3d06 should be but Im guessing it should be higher...also, it could be the power supply or on a stretch maybe its a 7900gs rev1 flashed to 7950...hmm wonder if thats possible...$160 just sounds too fishy, I'm about to do some tests...

Update:

I downlaoded a mod driver from tweaksrus and tried to run some 3DMARK06 tests under factory settings. When I did, my results analysis showed the correct 575MHz/600MHz that the card is suppused to be set at but I was getting like 2500 scores. I re-installed the Dell driver and was getting 4600 scores again but again it was displaying 6MHz/300MHz for the clock speeds on my GPU.



My system was getting like 950's with the X1400 POS which is about right according to

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-...TX.2121.0.html

The 7900GS is only supposed to ~3800. The 7950 GTX is supposed to get 5200 so Im closer to benchmarks for the 7950 than the 7900GS.

My dilema is that I'm more than happy getting the speeds I am now or even a little less, I was going to be fine with the 7900GS speeds but now I've invalidated my warranty by cutting on my chasis so I dont want to tread in areas that might endanger a meltdown of some sort.

Pardon my posts but I'm a bit of a noob at this, diving into waters that might be too deep for me.


Dell 9400/E1705: Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0 Ghz) | 512 MB Go 7950 GTX | 17" WUXGA | 2 GB DDR 2 (667) | 80 GB HD 7.200 RPM | 8x cd/dvd burner W/dbl layer | 90w Power | Bluetooth wireless card | Dell 1500 WiFi card with 802.1n draft | Windows XP Pro SP2 | 80w 9cell battery

I want to add: Thanks to all replies and comments and especially thanks to mbosys and all the others for this this thread and great detailed instructions for how to do this upgrade. You Rock!!

If you have the classic control panel - Display Properties -> Advanced -> Adapter -> See if the memory size is 512 MB

It says all the right things for the GTX but if the GPU BIOS had been flashed woudlnt it? Dell 9400/E1705: Core 2 Duo T7200 (2.0 Ghz) | 512 MB Go 7950 GTX | 17" WUXGA | 2 GB DDR 2 (667) | 80 GB HD 7.200 RPM | 8x cd/dvd burner W/dbl layer | 90w Power | Bluetooth wireless card | Dell 1500 WiFi card with 802.1n draft | Windows XP Pro SP2 | 80w 9cell battery

If you flash another bios it will report as a different card but the onboard memory will not change...hence a 7900gs flashed to gtx would still report 256 MB
Anyway, have fun with your new card...

quick question on the bios. My Bios says version A00, but its from 12/04/2006[or somewhere in there, dont rember the exact date]. the laptop is pretty much brand new. got in in early december, but it came with the x1400[its my work laptop] and it does ok, but the performance increase of the 7900/50 is ridiculous.

the laptop has a T7200 CPU and 2GB of ram [667mhz of course]

im just wondering what i need to do to the BIOS to be able to swap a 79x0GTX in.


*edit*
my bad on the bios, i was thikning of something else, the Bios are A06... im guessing these are still valid?

and im also guessing you retain the usie of the VGA/DVI/S-Video ports when you upgrade?

can you put a 7950 in a E1705?
what kind of card is the best to put in a E1705?
i have x1400 now.
i have Core Duo ( not core 2 duo ) considering changing that as well. :P

Yes, the performance increase from X1400 to 7900GS is indeed ridiculous. I had the X1400 originally and I only got 800+ 3DM05 score then it jumped to 6300+ when I upgraded to the 7900 GS, and that is not yet overclocked. I spat on my X1400 after the upgrade by the way. If you are going to do any serious gaming, you need to upgrade really bad. I did not do anything to the BIOS when I upgraded. My 1705 has all the latest Dell drivers though. The only thing you need to do is use CCleaner to remove the ATI vid driver before you do the upgrade. You do retain the use of all the video ports at the back. Nothing will change on that part. The video card is actually not connected directly to those ports so you dont have to remove/replace any of them.

Was able to install the 7950GTX on my E1705 using the OP's guide.
Running E1705 BIOS A07
Dell's 92.77 drivers.

All's great so far!

nice

The 7950 is just a higher clocked 7900GTX? Correct?

Y2J

pretty much afaik