GTS240 Upgrade?

I just received my Dell XPS 9000 with the GTS 240 Card. I was told at time of purchase that it had HDMI out.... but it only has 2 X DVI. I have to use a DVI to HDMI adapter which doesn't give me any audio to my HDTV. Dell will not trade out this card... I have to return the whole computer and start a new order which is a pain. I prefer to just bite the bullet and buy a replacement graphics card. Can someone please recommend a card that has HDMI which will carry audio without any additional cabling. The GTS240 is a decent enough card (if it had HDMI) although I can afford better. Just so you know.... I'm not a high end gamer.... not yet anyway.

Thanks!

ASUS EN9500GT/DI/1GD2/V2/A GeForce 9500 GT 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814121339

or

Galaxy 22TGE8HX2IUN GeForce GT 220 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814162040

What GT 240 did you get? As far as I know the 240's come with built in HDMI regardless of the brand...

It's a dell OEM board so they probably cut it off to save a few pennies - (gotta love ole DELL !!)

Before you pick a new card you need to tell us what your power supply is.

Slightly better than the Gt 240 in performance would be the 5670 for $99--it would also probably be safe on whatever PSU is running at GT 240.

The stock PSU on the 9000 is a 475w, so he should be fine with anything up to a 5770....

As an OEM card it will be sold through all OEM's like HP, Acer and suchlike not just Dell.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gts_240_us.html

Thanks for clearing that one up , its a shame that the OP has to deal with such an issue. I just got off the phone with an XPS rep and he states that all OEM 240's "HAVE" an HDMI output... Even their techy's have no clue as to what hardware they put into their systems....

Wow.... you folks are great.... thanks for the replies.
The GTS240 is a Dell OEM product and does not have HDMI.
The reason why I sprung for this card was the Dell Sales Rep insisted it had an HDMI port even though the picture showed 2X DVI.

I think I'll get the ATI HD 5770 as a replacement.

Thanks again.

I would love to see more people building instead of buying pre-built crap PC's....

Yep, if you are persistant they will help you out... If you do not call them they will think you are satisfied....

lol ................

could not have said that any better

I just don't like the fact that you hit a wall when it is time to upgrade the motherboard. That is not fair at all since the purpose of this is to lure you into buying a new system every 3-5 years. If Dell was like Cyberpower and Ibuypower where they actually use real "boards" then everyone would be happy and the company would have a better reputation. I have had my bad shares with Dell as well, not only for customers who want a Dell but for Corp. purposes where you normally buy a few dozen units and hope they last at least 5 years....

useless.... and hard to understand.....

and 3 hours later they have the nuts to ask "HAVE I ANSWERED ALL YOUR QUESTIONS?" and the best one "WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO TRANSFER YOU TO MY SUPERVISOR JUST SO YOU CAN TELL HIM HOW MY PERFORMANCE WAS? .... click, i hung up.....

Ahh, that's EXACTLY where you went wrong. You should have insisted on speaking to a supervisor when it was clear the lower end person either didn't know what they were talking about or was purposely giving you the run around. Asking for someones name and insisting on talking to their supervisor usually makes people change their tune fast and if not repeat the process with the supervisor as they have supervisors as well. Eventually you will get to someone that either knows what they are talking about or is willing to make up for whatever is bothering you. Often the lower end people are just screening out simple problems or trying to get you to go away and not bother them. If you have a reasonable request/problem don't let them put you off. Like what the OP said. They advertised HDMI and it doesn't have HDMI. It is NOT your problem it is theirs and they should give you a card that has HDMI. Call them and insist on speaking with people higher and higher up the chain of command until you get to someone that will acknowledge this. It will probably take a while and be an annoying process but it's better than getting shafted and paying for it yourself IMO.

So... I just got off the phone with Dell again regarding this issue and actually did get elevated to a supervisor. They just continued to tell me the same apologetic nonsense: "They can not accept a return of an inside component for credit or exchange for a different device." I laid into them in a rather unapologetic manner, explaining that their customer service is severely lacking and I would never buy their product again. They didn't seem to care at all.... and it was a Customer Care supervisor I was speaking with.
Their solution is to have me return the whole computer, order another one with a different video card, and wait about 3-4 weeks again for delivery. Wouldn't you think that just crediting me the cost of the card rather than incur the shipping and handling of the system being returned makes logical sense?
What a terrible experience.... I won't soon forget this runaround.

Well remember there's always someone higher up(unless you are somehow actually speaking to the CEO.) That supervisor has a boss. Insist on speaking to them. Ask if they will send you a replacement computer FIRST and let you return your current system after it has been received.

There is a home build section here. They are really good at building a system if you help them out. You could copy someone elses build and tweak it a little if needed. They are quite helpful there.

These are the main reasons why you get a better PC when you build :

1. You choose the parts, REAL parts not generic crap that OEM's use.
2. No need to deal with motherboards that cannot be upgraded down the road.
3. You build your PC to YOUR specific needs, not limited by the lousy sellection you get by an OEM.
4. You learn alot just by putting the PC together, this in turn helps when something goes wrong.
5. Satisfaction knowing that YOU built it.
5. Money saved for upgrades down the road.
6. No more calls to DELL, meaning no more headaches
7. Your built system will be upgradable for many years to come, no need to shell out 1 or 2k every 3 years for a new system.
8. Once you are done building and you fire that baby up you will have a smile on your face that will light up a room....
9. well you get the idea

It's good to know the GTS240 isn't going to waste. Enjoy your new system!

I just wanted to respond to the query as to why some people opt for a Dell instead of building their own. It is possible to buy a new Dell cheaper than you can build a machine, once you add in the cost of OS and monitor. My Vostro 220 cost me $419 + shipping and sales tax (in Dec of '08). It included a nice 20" DVI monitor, Core 2 Duo E7300, 2 gigs ram, 250 gb hard drive. I upgraded to 4 gb of ram ($45 at the time), a Radeon HD-4670 $65 (ran fine on 300W PSU) and a $25 wireless usb network adapter. For less than $600 total, I had a machine that could play pretty much any game at 1440x900 res with Vista Home premium. Seriously, I couldn't have built one for anywhere near that, especially including the nice monitor.
More recently, I ordered a new Emachine for my sister in law. Don't cringe, it only had a Celeron 420 CPU, 2 gigs of ram, onboard Nvidia 7050 video and 160 gig hd. But it did come with Vista Home basic, a media card reader, DVD-RW and for a total cost of $189 shipped it totally beat any upgrade I could have done to her old system (a Duron 1300, 40 gig HD, pirated XP, no disc to reinstall, 256 mb of PC-133 ram) for the same price. I may upgrade her PSU and add toss in an old video card to further enhance it, but she and her husband are totally thrilled with it as is! I guess everything is relative.

I'd agree that at some times there are good deals out there on a prebuilt system and for some users they work well - the thing is this is a hardware forum and most enthusiasts are not going to be happy with a pre-built system for example the Vostro 220 you mention - while for the price it seems a good deal when you really look at the items included it is about $419 worth of lower end parts - the E7300 is one of the low end core 2 duo chips that has been phased out (not sure when you purchased but it was most likely during the time it was being phased out so was sold at a discounted price to reduce inventory) - the 2 Gigs of Ram are probably also higher latency and lower speed than a person buying and building a system would use, the 250 GB HDD is probably a slower model with a smaller cache, the copy of the Windows OS is most likely OEM so can not be reused for a new system since the license is tied to the MOBO which is also probably a cheaper model possibly even having some parts removed from the regular versions of the MOBO (many prebuilts only include 2 DIMM slots or a smaller # of other slots on the MOBO) - And finally as mentioned the 300W PSU is going to limit the upgrade possibilities in the future.

So while for you it may have been a good deal and you were aware of the limitations with it and it fit your needs, but in most cases for a hardware enthusiast they are not really that good of a deal when you start looking at the total system compared to what you could assemble by selecting each part yourself - Again that is dependent on what your needs and plans for the system are.