Did the person who started this thread ever receive there money back?

Ive just read the thread and it looks like you got a good result with DELL offering to honor the warranty agreement after all. I think your very lucky because DELL did'nt have to do that even if the guy did have the warranty transfered because all requests to transfer ownership, service, limited warranty and Dell support are determined at Dell's sole discretion and they are not legally obliged to do so. Brilliant. Mykill

I think I'm going to stick with the refund, Its a slim chance that the BIOS is disrupting the PCIe bus its more probable that a main board fault is causing those issues its even possible the same fault is causing BIOS corruption. I could just ask DELL to take the machine and fix the issue and if I'd had the machine a while and it started acting up I would have done but its not worked since I first turned it on and has Ive progressed more and more faults have turned up. It started off has the TV card wouldnt work and the system returned to a low resolution after every boot to all the issues I have now. I can play games on the machine but it freezes when things get busy and I have to do a hot shutdown. I dont get any error for it in event viewer except for the unexpected shutdown so there is no way to troubleshoot that problem. Ive given up with DELL Ive already picked the machine I want I just hope they do quick refunds. I'm going to vanish now but thanks for the help. Take care Heliosfa I'm sure to see you on this forum in the future. Bye for now.

I'm using everest ultimate for all my temps it gives each individual core and the CPU temp, both GPU temps the HD temp and core voltage plus a figure for the CPU fan which I dont understand its at 1.0. Why would the BIOS display two different frequencys if it wasnt faulty and why wont speedstep disable even though its registered has disabled. A flash might sort it out and its possible the BIOS is responsible for all the problems but do you think its worth me carrying on trying to troubleshoot each individual problem. Ive sorted out a few and now you have sorted that one but has a whole for a PC to this corrupt right out of the box. I dont know, I'd love it to work properly I do like the machine but its also the way DELL are treating me.

When the CPU is idle its at 42c but none of the cores go above 35, Ive stressed it for a while and the its reached 64c but the cores are in the high 40s. I dont think heat is an issue it seems to have settled at 64c in fact its going down to 63c at times. Seems very stable. Ive already told DELL I want a refund, there are too many issues and Ive been troubleshooting for a month and if I update to the latest Nvidia drivers I lose all stability, plus the TV card and PhysX dont work neither do the controls for gamma, brightness and stuff in Nvidia control panel. Now I know the BIOS is faulty to:-|

That did it, the CPU can now reach 2.5GHz whoopee, but there is a problem because even though Ive disabled speedstep I used Tmonitor by CPUID to monitor the CPU frequency and its still throttling up from 2GHz. But you did what I couldnt, Nvidia control panel is now reading 2.5GHz with a multiplier of 7.5X also.

You were right in your first estimation, the BIOS is faulty so maybe DELL havent messed with it. Ive just been back in the BIOS and the greyed out area now reads 2500MHz with a 7.5 multiplier with the current value the same. So I turned off N/2 and did a quick restart and checked again and it read 2333MHz and so did the current value. Yet the CPU will still only run at 2333MHz. Ive just run a test now. I'm glad I took a photo of the BIOS showing 2 different settings together on the same page people would think I was making it up. http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb274/mykel100/Photo0022.jpg

What I basically need to know is in the overclock settings, if you set the frequency below the CPU native speed would that override the CPU speed, really I'm asking can you underclock with this overclock feature.

Yes it would require a flash to let me back into the features but Ive no intention of doing it. I just need someone with knowledge of these overclock features, usually you can highlight a feature and the right hand panel will tell you exactly what that feature does but because DELL have tampered with the BIOS I cant find out.

There have been a lot of complaints to DELL regards this system freezing up and I mean a lot. DELL have actually been asking in there own forums if anyone can figure out why it is happening (The replies were so funny). I believe DELL realised that if the frequency is reduced yu get a lot less freezes and lets be honest here 99% of people wouldnt have a clue what speed there machine is running at and they thought they would get away with it. Thats my opinion. I dont think theres anything wrong with the BIOS or the CPU.

Its an XPS630I with a [email protected](2.3GHz) I personally think DELL underclocked it.

Do you think its possible with laptops and computers with intergrated graphics that they can use the extra memory, maybe, I dont know. I know the amount of memory used by other devices is very small so thats all I can think of.

This is were DELL have me baffled they have locked me out of all the controls relating to Overclock so I cant change anything. I believe the machines are deliberately underclocked because of problems running them at 2.5GHz. This is were I'm unsure Ive been away from PCs for nearly 2 years and this has me confused. This is why I asked the advise on the overclock settings.

We are going off topic here yet again but have you read the article it clearly states Vista 32bit can only use 3.12GB also from the article. For Windows Vista to use all 4 GB of memory on a computer that has 4 GB of memory installed, the computer must meet the following requirements: The chipset must support at least 8 GB of address space. Chipsets that have this capability include the following: Intel 975X Intel P965 Intel 955X on Socket 775 Chipsets that support AMD processors that use socket F, socket 940, socket 939, or socket AM2. These chipsets include any AMD socket and CPU combination in which the memory controller resides in the CPU. [*]The CPU must support the x64 instruction set. The AMD64 CPU and the Intel EM64T CPU support this instruction set. [*]The BIOS must support the memory remapping feature. The memory remapping feature allows for the segment of system memory that was previously overwritten by the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) configuration space to be remapped above the 4 GB address line. This feature must be enabled in the BIOS configuration utility on the computer. View your computer product documentation for instructions that explain how to enable this feature. Many consumer-oriented computers may not support the memory remapping feature. No standard terminology is used in documentation or in BIOS configuration utilities for this feature. Therefore, you may have to read the descriptions of the various BIOS configuration settings that are available to determine whether any of the settings enable the memory remapping feature. [*]An x64 (64-bit) version of Windows Vista must be used.

If this is so why does Everest report 3GB under physical memory on my 32 bit vista system yet reports 8GB on my 64bit system, both systems have all the same devices requiring addressable space in fact the 64bit machines has a lot more. I know there is 4GB and system isnt lying but Vista's 32bit versions actually limit how much memory you can use in practice to 3.12GB (See support.microsoft.com/kb/929605)