Hi everyone,
I recently purchased a Dell Studio XPS 9100 Desktop and overall have been very happy with its performance outside of the worthless wireless N card Dell put in (that I quickly replaced with a much better D-Link wireless N adapter) and had a question that no one at Dell has been able to really answer for me so far.
When I ordered this machine I had the option of putting any number of ATI cards into it including the Radeon 5870 or the 5970. At the time because I wanted to be conservative with my money (even though I really didn't have to be) I ordered the 5870. Its a great card but then the other day a friend of mine got around to talking up how great the new GTX 580 is and being a gamer naturally my interest picked up. While its a simply matter to just swap out the video card I need to make sure my power supply can handle it and thats where I hit a brick wall. Dell's support insists this machine has a 525W power supply in it, and I even managed to back one of their sales reps into a corner and get them to admit to me that the 5870 and 5970 both require a 650W power supply or better and then he told me that the 5870 simply won't work with my system. After informing him that I currently have the 5870 he said that honestly he has no idea and transfered me to a Dell tech support goon who rehashed most of the same stuff but told me that the GTX 580 hasn't been tested with the Dell systems and they don't know how it would work, however the 5970 has been tested and works with the 9100 XPS Desktops.
So here is my question, and forgive me if I sound a bit dumb asking this but how the heck can my machine be all set to handle the HD 5970 which is a dual gpu card that has an obnoxious power requirement and they tell me that my machine may or may not be able to handle the GTX 580? Does anyone know how large of a power supply is actually in these XPS 9100 Desktop computers because I opened the case and it has no info anywhere on it, I saw a label on the back with some amps listed but that was it and it wasn't on the power supply. Sorry but I'm just a bit dumbfounded by this one and would like an actual answer as opposed to the smoke and mirrors Dell support gave me on this one.
I recently purchased a Dell Studio XPS 9100 Desktop and overall have been very happy with its performance outside of the worthless wireless N card Dell put in (that I quickly replaced with a much better D-Link wireless N adapter) and had a question that no one at Dell has been able to really answer for me so far.
When I ordered this machine I had the option of putting any number of ATI cards into it including the Radeon 5870 or the 5970. At the time because I wanted to be conservative with my money (even though I really didn't have to be) I ordered the 5870. Its a great card but then the other day a friend of mine got around to talking up how great the new GTX 580 is and being a gamer naturally my interest picked up. While its a simply matter to just swap out the video card I need to make sure my power supply can handle it and thats where I hit a brick wall. Dell's support insists this machine has a 525W power supply in it, and I even managed to back one of their sales reps into a corner and get them to admit to me that the 5870 and 5970 both require a 650W power supply or better and then he told me that the 5870 simply won't work with my system. After informing him that I currently have the 5870 he said that honestly he has no idea and transfered me to a Dell tech support goon who rehashed most of the same stuff but told me that the GTX 580 hasn't been tested with the Dell systems and they don't know how it would work, however the 5970 has been tested and works with the 9100 XPS Desktops.
So here is my question, and forgive me if I sound a bit dumb asking this but how the heck can my machine be all set to handle the HD 5970 which is a dual gpu card that has an obnoxious power requirement and they tell me that my machine may or may not be able to handle the GTX 580? Does anyone know how large of a power supply is actually in these XPS 9100 Desktop computers because I opened the case and it has no info anywhere on it, I saw a label on the back with some amps listed but that was it and it wasn't on the power supply. Sorry but I'm just a bit dumbfounded by this one and would like an actual answer as opposed to the smoke and mirrors Dell support gave me on this one.