Here it is my guide to upgrading your 9300 to put in a 6800 Ultra Card, or a 7800, I take no responsibility if you break your laptop or waste your money attempting anything I am about to show you. If you are not comfortable in taking full responsibility for you actions doing this then don't. Remeber if you do not have the 9 cell battery or the 130 watt adapter and you flash your bios you will render your laptop useless until you get one of those. You can boot with a 9 cell battery but without the 130 watt adapter it will only run in low power mode. You need both for this to work!!!

I have a 100% converted laptop as shown on the link below, please take a look and vote for it's name.

http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=112813

First things first the supplies you will need:

XPS2 Power Brick:



I have been told that this will only work with power brick revision A02 and newer. A00 and A01 will most likely not work.
Manufacturer Part # D1078
Dell Part # 310-6580

Dell Price: $69.95

Ebay usually goes for part # PA-13.

I ordered my power supply from Ebay for $40 shipped and it is perfect. Just do a search on Ebay for XPS 2, and check the parts section, as long as the ad says its for an XPS 2 you should be fine, and if not I hope the buyer has a return/exchange policy.

9 Cell Battery:



Manufacturer Part # G5266
Dell Part # 310-6322

Dell Price: $179.00

Ebay $80

XPS 2 Northbridge Heatsink:



This is the sucker that let's the extra heatpipe the 6800 Ultra and 7800 have fit in your laptop. Some people already have one of these inside there system so you want to open up your laptop and see what heatsink you have before you buy this one.

Dell Part # F8451

Dell Price $10.95

6800 Ultra or 7800 GTX:

Well this is why you would be doing this mod so I doubt either card needs an introduction.

Dell 6800U Part # C5846
Dell Price $349-$399

Dell 7800 Part # XPSG2GU
Dell Price: $349-$499

XPS2 Hacked Bios Update:


Thankfully skeetjlt made a boot cd for the bios update so all you need to do is download the file from the link below:

http://rapidshare.de/files/7554202/FDBOOTCDXPS.iso.html

Burn the ISO using Nero or Roxio or any decent CD burning software, then restart you PC and press F12 at the Dell Logo screen and select CD-rom as your boot device.

Choose Option 1
Choose Option 1 again
Choose Option 2

Type cd\freedos\3rdparty

Type IXPS2A01

Press any key

If you get an error about flashing your bios with an older bios just push "C" to continue.

Press Y to flash your bios with the XPS2 Bios.

System will restart and your 9300 now believes its a XPS.

If you need to return to the 9300 bios you need to follow the exact same steps as above and type I9300A02 instead of IXPS2A01 for the bios file.

Just in case the boot CD does not work (it should) for you, or you prefer to use a USB key drive, I am including instructions below. Skip this and go to the "Windows" section if you have already used the Boot CD.

Here is a link for the bios update:

http://discord.anarchs.com/bios/XPS2Bios.zip

This contains the cracked XPS, and 9300 bios's.

You will need either a floppy disk or USB key drive to boot your 9300 off of to flash the bios.

I personally used the HP boot utility to make a usb keydrive bootable, the good part about the HP utility is that it works on any USB keydrive or USB Hard drive.

Link:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/fi...oad/20306.html

You will need a computer with a Windows 98 bootdisk to copy the data onto the keydrive using the HP software you can get the 98 bootdisk image from:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Copy the XPS2, and 9300 Bios onto you boot media, restart your pc and press F12 of the boot up screen and make sure you select your dos boot device. Run the XPS 2 flash utility (as long as you have the 9cell battery and 130 watt adapter).

Windows

After you reboot Windows should redetect all your hardware, and then tell you to reboot. After you have rebooted again remove your previous NVIDA drivers (Add or Remove programs) and reboot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner PE to remove all traces of the NVIDA drivers.

I have given you all the tools you need to flash the bios in your laptop if you cannot get this to work then you most likely should not attempt this mod, feel free to reply if you have problems but if you don't understand how this works dont attempt it.

You can update your Bios to the latest XPS2 or M170 Bios as soon as you are certain Windows works.

Alright now for opening up your system and installing the Video card and Heatsink.

Here is the technical documents from Dell on how to open your 9300, I am not going to rewrite these Dell did a great job.

Link:
http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...en&s=dhs&cs=19



This is the inside of my 9300 with the new heatsink and old video card installed, the new video card has two heatpipes, while the vanilla 6800 has one.

Follow the steps for removing the Video card.

After you remove the video card, remove the Northbridge heatsink to the left of it. It is 3 screws and Dell will show you how if you look at "Removing the MCM heatsink on the tech page.

With the video card and heatsink out install the new XPS2 heatsink in place of your old 9300 one. 3 screws real easy nuff said.

After the heatsink is in you can now insert your new video card, it should fit right in effortlessly and if you have any difficulties stop and make sure the card is lined up right.

Put you laptop back together and boot up into Windows, after you get into windows the found new hardware wizard should come up, as long as you removed the NVIDIA drivers before installing the new card. Cancel out of the New hardware wizard and reinstall whatever drivers you feel like, either the Dell offical or ones from LaptopVideotoGo.

After reisntalling the drivers reboot your system and you should have a 9300 with a nice upgraded video card, if you are having any problems with the NVIDA drivers you might need to reinstall Windows but I doubt If that will be needed.

There you go, your system should now work fine with the newer video card. Thanks to all the help everyone has contributed to this guide.

By demand here is the link for the 7800 overclocking guide:
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=117648.

Nice job

Awesome job. Just the mere fact that I know it's possible makes me feel better about choosing the 9300 over the XPS2. I was worried when I first read the initial info on the 7800 release. I really thought we got hosed. Even if I don't attempt the mod, it eases my mind knowing it's possible.

Adrien

very nice guide IRobertus!

One question though,
So do we need both the 9-cell batt, and 130w ac adapter or just 1 of them?
For instance I already have a 9-cell battery

I believe as long as you boot up with the 9 cell you can use the smaller adapter, but if you try to boot up with the AC connected it wont work.

you need a 130w adaptor. When flashing the BIOS it makes sure you are plugged into mains first.

Plus you wuldnt be able to use the full graphics power of the card if its only running on battery.

alright guys thanks for your help, looks like when i do this i'll be getting the 130w adapter, because why would u do it and not use full potential.
That and i see them on ebay for pretty cheap!

awesome thread, thanks

I want a 7800 gtx, but damn they are so expensive

awesome!!! Thanks irobertus!!!! this should definitely be a sticky !!! btw... whats the link for the technical documents for disassembling the 9300 ? its not posted above

GREAT guide!
Did you had to put thermal paste in 6800U?
Also, what is the difference between the XPS2 and i9300 heatsink? Can't really tell from the pictures.

Nice job. This is definitely not for the amature. Hefty price, $700, for a video card upgrade. Not to mention the risk and the work. This mod is a good project to challenge oneself with, but I personally wouldn't spend the money, time, and risk for the sake of improving performance over the 6800 Go. But that's just me.

Nevertheless, a good guide you've put together there.

What he says.

nice job man...

have u ran any test or played some games we can see some screenshots of

Glad that mod succeed but I'm not going to do this since this is already enough for me.

question, i have insurance on my computer, meaning if something goes wrong i will get my money back or the compnay will replace it, u guys still recommend me doing this cuz im really interested. ive never really worked inside a computer though, besides installing a pci video card on my desktop.