XPS 8300's won't support GTX 600's and Dell will not update BIOS

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MarcDB

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May 31, 2012
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I outlined my frustration trying to install a GTX 670 in my Dell XPS 8300 here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1696853. The system has been modified quite a bit, but I'm am still using the original mobo.

Apparenlty the XPS 8300's are now d/c'd, (not too long ago, I might add), and the last BIOS update did not have support for the new Kepler chips. Dell seems to have taken the position that they will not update the BIOS for d/c'd products, so all the XPS 8300 owners are screwed as far as Kepler is concerned.

NVIDIA initially indicated they were working on an updated VBIOS back in March, but so far nothing has been produced.

I am taking the plunge and doing my first mobo upgrade, since the GPU is important to me. For anyone else with an XPS 8300 (not too many here, I know) be warned.
 
What in the motherboard BIOS could be preventing the video card from working? As far as the motherboard is concerned, it should be just another PCIe card. There's nothing special about the Kepler cards, except that they are PCIe 3.0, which shouldn't matter since they are backwards compatible.
 
I actually had a similar problem with an XPS 8300 refurb I bought from the outlet. It wouldn't boot with a Galaxy GTX 460 I bought, they went so far as to send a tech to my house with a replacement motherboard, to no avail. After a phone call and a lot of calm complaining, they ended up sending me an OEM gtx 560 that did work.

No idea what it is about the motherboard, but it seems to be kind of a crap shoot as to whether or not the video card will be 'compatible'.

I'd love to know how it goes with your mobo upgrade.
 
I see nothing has change at Dell. I had this same problem years ago back in the AGP days.
 
MarcDB said:
BIOS update did not have support for the new Kepler chips
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Previous to this, the only motherboard-GPU incompatibility I've ever heard of was that a few PCI-E 1.0 motherboards didn't like the first run of Nvidia's first PCI-E 2.0 video cards - and Nvidia fixed the problem on their end with later runs.

Making a motherboard that is incompatible with any PCI-E video card is pure incompetence and a massive failure on Dell's part. It's not that hard to achieve PCI-E standards compliance. Screw them.
 
KaptainKhaos said:
friends don't let friends buy Dell :)
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Hey now the Dell 531 I bought my Dad back in 2006 is still kicking World of Warcrafts butt almost 6 years later. I've never had to replace a single part, it still works just as good as the day it arrived.

Maybe I'm just lucky =P either way the "old' Dell is good in my book. Hope your new MB works out good and you can get that 670 working ;)
 
I guess I'm not shocked that Dell still has a vendor lockout on some parts given their history of using proprietary PC parts. I'm sure there's some BIOS level boot code that, if you really wanted to, you could edit and add your card into the hardware whitelist (I see that all the time with laptops).
 
iirc, the card will actually work, but you need a second card to get into windows, and then enable the other card in nv control panel every boot.
 
Forceman said:
What in the motherboard BIOS could be preventing the video card from working? As far as the motherboard is concerned, it should be just another PCIe card. There's nothing special about the Kepler cards, except that they are PCIe 3.0, which shouldn't matter since they are backwards compatible.
Click to expand...

I may be misinterpreting, the NVIDIA rep and others on the NVIDIA forum had a long back-and-forth on this. The terms BIOS and VBIOS were being applied to this issue. I assumed the VBIOS was a section of the system BIOS.
 
Why would a company using proprietary parts let you upgrade your PC? I wouldn't be shocked if Dell went out of their way to make upgrading very hard if not impossible. I tried buying a Dell laptop once. There was a problem with my CC and the only place that deals with this was having some issue and I was simply hung up on 5 times without being spoken to. The most frustrating thing was not even being able to complain to anyone about this. You are at the mercy of the Indian culture when you deal with Dell. I don't care how good their deals are I will never buy through them.
 
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