I'm having a problem with Dell XPS 730 H2C. I will try my best to describe it here as briefly as possible
My specs: Intel Qx9770 3.2 ghz (factory overclocked to 3.8 ghz), nforce nvidia 790i ultra-SLI chipset based mobo, 4 gigs corsair dominator ddr3 1333 mhz RAM (factory overclocked to 1600 mhz), 1 terabyte HDD, dual 1 gb nvidia gtx 280 graphics cards and windows vista 32 bit home premium
the cpu and RAM came factory-overclocked. I don't know if Dell used the nvidia control panel software or BIOS to overclock them. and i'm still lamenting myself for having not paid attention to how they did it.
as usual, like many xps 730 owners with 4 gigs of ram or more already did, i called dell and asked for a windows vista 64 bit dvd. it got shipped, i installed it, let vista install all necessary updates except any drivers, then went to nvidia's site to download drivers for mobo and graphics card. smooth and easy.
but when i got rid of Dell's preinstalled 32 bit vista, formatted the C drive and installed Dell's vista 64 bit, the overclocking settings got automatically wiped out. On 32 bit, RAM was facotry overclocked at 1600 mhz from 1333 mhz as advertized and cpu overclocked at 3.8 ghz from 3.2 ghz as advertized. upon installing 64 bit, I lost them all. which now makes me believe that dell factory-overclocked the system using the software, not the BIOS. because if it was done through BIOS, i wouldn't have lost the overclocked configurations.
well, now here it was. although the full 4 gigs of ram was being detected and utilized by windows vista 64 bit, I lost any and every single overclock that dell did for me before shipping the system to me. Cpu is back to 3.2 ghz. RAM back to 1333 mhz/ Also, my machine is suitable for overclocking, or should be, because it's a H2C, or it has a liquid cooling system in it.
So, I went into the bios, tried to load set up default and restarted with the intention to forget about what dell did and didn't, and hoped that Dell would assist me in reovercloking the system like their engineers did.
Unfortunately, Dell didn't. they would do so if i have 32 bit vista, but they would refuse to give me warranty or support on windows vista 64 bit. I respect Dell's policy and I'm not blaming them for anything. It's me who chose to go the 64 bit route, not Dell. Please don't assume I'm whining.
So, I decided to take things on my own hand and ask the specialists in various forums. Then all of a sudden I found Dell's Chris Nixon's XPS faqs, where it clearly states how to overclock not only 730, but also 730x, 630 etc. Boy did I feel relieved.
But here's what's wrong with it:
Chris Nixon says that people who have Qx9770 and corsair dominator RAM should go to BIOS and then 1) set CPU multiplier to 9x 2) C1E function = disabled 3) Executive Disable Bit = Enabled 4) Virtualization = Enabled 5) SpeedStep = Disabled and
6) CPU N/2 Ratio to Disabled << here's what i don't understand. If i don't enable it, I don't get the advertized 3.8 ghz from the CPU. Neither nvidia system tools nor CPU-Z reports the advertized 3.8 ghz frequency. instead what they do is report 3.6 ghz, because due to c1e function disabled, .5 multiplier isn't added to 9.
EPP 2.0 Memory setting CPU OC 0% = Enabled << If I do this, I get blue screens of death in and out of games. System becomes unstable although it boots up and restarts fine. I have to hard-reset/shutdown the system when it happens. It's understood that when EPP 2.0 is set to CPU OC 0 percent, I get the advertized speed of 1600 mhz.
If i set EPP 2.0 to Auto and disregard Mixon's suggested setting, everything LOOKS normal, games run at blazing speed, don't crash, nothing happens to anything, prime95 can run for 6-7 hours (as far as I have tested) while doing rigorous torture on both the CPU and the RAM, and nothing happens...but here's the surprise:
with EPP set to AUTO, system hangs (hangs as in total system freeze. everything's visible on the monitor, but mouse and keyboad don't work and HDD light goes totally inactive whereas HDD is pretty active under Vista as you all already know) when I'm browsing sites, or when I go to sleep with with screen saver running. with Auto enabled, when the system hangs, it leaves no reason/cause to the system even viewer (i have combed through every nook and cranny of system even viewer like i would do if a 60,000 dollar car that i bought goes missing)
one thing that needs to be mentioned here is that I just bought a 865 watt APC UPS for the xps 730 H2C, and my previous UPS was a 200 watt that i bought for the old dimenion e521 that i bought three years ago. Could it be because of voltage or electricity problems? My house seems to be suffering from frequent but very short elecricity failures recently, and they last from 1 second to 10 seconds but not more than that.
the system is now connected to the APC 865 watts, and I'm gonna enable EPP 2.0 to Auto again to see if system randomly hangs again.
Oh and i entirely forgot. with EPP 2.0 disabled and CPU overclock settings set to C1E = disabled, speedstep =
disabled, virtualization = enabled, executive disable bit = disabled, CPU multiplier set to 9 and cpu n/2 ratio set to Enabled, this system runs like a F/18 hornet. my highest uptime with the settings mentioned above is 88 hours and some minutes and then I decided to shut it down and call it a 'stable'.
Also, under vista 32 bit and dell's factory-overclocked settings, system never randomly froze either.
Sorry for such a long post. hope someone would have the patience to read it
XPS 730, Intel Qx9770 3.8 GHZ OCed, 4 GB Corsair Dominator 1333 mhz (4X1gb)
Dual nVIDIA GTX 280 1024 MB GDDR3 on each card
H2C Liquid Cooling, Dual dvd/rw drives, 1 Terabyte SATA 2.0 HDD
Dell 30 inch Widescreen Ultrasharp Max Resolution 2560X1600
Win Vista 64 bit Home Premium
Win Vista 32 bit Home Premium
4 Years of Extended warranty and 4 years of Accidental damage care service
My specs: Intel Qx9770 3.2 ghz (factory overclocked to 3.8 ghz), nforce nvidia 790i ultra-SLI chipset based mobo, 4 gigs corsair dominator ddr3 1333 mhz RAM (factory overclocked to 1600 mhz), 1 terabyte HDD, dual 1 gb nvidia gtx 280 graphics cards and windows vista 32 bit home premium
the cpu and RAM came factory-overclocked. I don't know if Dell used the nvidia control panel software or BIOS to overclock them. and i'm still lamenting myself for having not paid attention to how they did it.
as usual, like many xps 730 owners with 4 gigs of ram or more already did, i called dell and asked for a windows vista 64 bit dvd. it got shipped, i installed it, let vista install all necessary updates except any drivers, then went to nvidia's site to download drivers for mobo and graphics card. smooth and easy.
but when i got rid of Dell's preinstalled 32 bit vista, formatted the C drive and installed Dell's vista 64 bit, the overclocking settings got automatically wiped out. On 32 bit, RAM was facotry overclocked at 1600 mhz from 1333 mhz as advertized and cpu overclocked at 3.8 ghz from 3.2 ghz as advertized. upon installing 64 bit, I lost them all. which now makes me believe that dell factory-overclocked the system using the software, not the BIOS. because if it was done through BIOS, i wouldn't have lost the overclocked configurations.
well, now here it was. although the full 4 gigs of ram was being detected and utilized by windows vista 64 bit, I lost any and every single overclock that dell did for me before shipping the system to me. Cpu is back to 3.2 ghz. RAM back to 1333 mhz/ Also, my machine is suitable for overclocking, or should be, because it's a H2C, or it has a liquid cooling system in it.
So, I went into the bios, tried to load set up default and restarted with the intention to forget about what dell did and didn't, and hoped that Dell would assist me in reovercloking the system like their engineers did.
Unfortunately, Dell didn't. they would do so if i have 32 bit vista, but they would refuse to give me warranty or support on windows vista 64 bit. I respect Dell's policy and I'm not blaming them for anything. It's me who chose to go the 64 bit route, not Dell. Please don't assume I'm whining.
So, I decided to take things on my own hand and ask the specialists in various forums. Then all of a sudden I found Dell's Chris Nixon's XPS faqs, where it clearly states how to overclock not only 730, but also 730x, 630 etc. Boy did I feel relieved.
But here's what's wrong with it:
Chris Nixon says that people who have Qx9770 and corsair dominator RAM should go to BIOS and then 1) set CPU multiplier to 9x 2) C1E function = disabled 3) Executive Disable Bit = Enabled 4) Virtualization = Enabled 5) SpeedStep = Disabled and
6) CPU N/2 Ratio to Disabled << here's what i don't understand. If i don't enable it, I don't get the advertized 3.8 ghz from the CPU. Neither nvidia system tools nor CPU-Z reports the advertized 3.8 ghz frequency. instead what they do is report 3.6 ghz, because due to c1e function disabled, .5 multiplier isn't added to 9.
EPP 2.0 Memory setting CPU OC 0% = Enabled << If I do this, I get blue screens of death in and out of games. System becomes unstable although it boots up and restarts fine. I have to hard-reset/shutdown the system when it happens. It's understood that when EPP 2.0 is set to CPU OC 0 percent, I get the advertized speed of 1600 mhz.
If i set EPP 2.0 to Auto and disregard Mixon's suggested setting, everything LOOKS normal, games run at blazing speed, don't crash, nothing happens to anything, prime95 can run for 6-7 hours (as far as I have tested) while doing rigorous torture on both the CPU and the RAM, and nothing happens...but here's the surprise:
with EPP set to AUTO, system hangs (hangs as in total system freeze. everything's visible on the monitor, but mouse and keyboad don't work and HDD light goes totally inactive whereas HDD is pretty active under Vista as you all already know) when I'm browsing sites, or when I go to sleep with with screen saver running. with Auto enabled, when the system hangs, it leaves no reason/cause to the system even viewer (i have combed through every nook and cranny of system even viewer like i would do if a 60,000 dollar car that i bought goes missing)
one thing that needs to be mentioned here is that I just bought a 865 watt APC UPS for the xps 730 H2C, and my previous UPS was a 200 watt that i bought for the old dimenion e521 that i bought three years ago. Could it be because of voltage or electricity problems? My house seems to be suffering from frequent but very short elecricity failures recently, and they last from 1 second to 10 seconds but not more than that.
the system is now connected to the APC 865 watts, and I'm gonna enable EPP 2.0 to Auto again to see if system randomly hangs again.
Oh and i entirely forgot. with EPP 2.0 disabled and CPU overclock settings set to C1E = disabled, speedstep =
disabled, virtualization = enabled, executive disable bit = disabled, CPU multiplier set to 9 and cpu n/2 ratio set to Enabled, this system runs like a F/18 hornet. my highest uptime with the settings mentioned above is 88 hours and some minutes and then I decided to shut it down and call it a 'stable'.
Also, under vista 32 bit and dell's factory-overclocked settings, system never randomly froze either.
Sorry for such a long post. hope someone would have the patience to read it
XPS 730, Intel Qx9770 3.8 GHZ OCed, 4 GB Corsair Dominator 1333 mhz (4X1gb)
Dual nVIDIA GTX 280 1024 MB GDDR3 on each card
H2C Liquid Cooling, Dual dvd/rw drives, 1 Terabyte SATA 2.0 HDD
Dell 30 inch Widescreen Ultrasharp Max Resolution 2560X1600
Win Vista 64 bit Home Premium
Win Vista 32 bit Home Premium
4 Years of Extended warranty and 4 years of Accidental damage care service
