Dell Dimensions

[downquark1]

My friend bought a dell dimension 2400 and found it doesn't have a AGP port. Is is possible to change the motherboard or would it be better to swap the whole thing.

PS: I hate dell

[SMHarman]

When did they buy it?
Can you change the mobo, probably.
This is likely to cause problems with XP as a dell shipped XP disk will only install on a Dell Phoenix BIOS PC (so I'm told, same with thier OEM Office suites).
The 2400 range is the basic one and likely to have less functionality as it is built down to a price. the 4nnn ranges are generally a more sensible buy (hindsight though).

[Dave Stones]

you can't change the motherboard on a dell pc. the motherboard, and PSU are proprietary things designed for that pc only. strange yes, but hey dell have quite a large consumer base.

im sure if dellwear is knocking about he will know more, he is something of a dell addict

i have a dimension 8100 btw, so know vaguely what i am talking about

[Matth]

Sounds like a lament I've heard on another forum - Intel "Extreme" (cough!) graphics just don't cut it for anything more than an office PC, and with no AGP, the best you can find in PCI is a Geforce FX5200 (pretty lame DX9) or an ATI Radeon 9200 (only DX8 hardware).

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Matth

Sounds like a lament I've heard on another forum - Intel "Extreme" (cough!) graphics just don't cut it for anything more than an office PC, and with no AGP, the best you can find in PCI is a Geforce FX5200 (pretty lame DX9) or an ATI Radeon 9200 (only DX8 hardware).

Will that Geforce one do pixel and vertex shaders?

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by downquark1

My friend bought a dell dimension 2400 and found it doesn't have a AGP port. Is is possible to change the motherboard or would it be better to swap the whole thing.

PS: I hate dell

I'm afraid you get what you pay for, like Dave said the 2400 is a very basic model.

Not a lot you can do other than sell it and get a new one if an AGP slot is all that important. I'd have thought that if it was important to them then they would have picked a system without an on-board graphics card in the first place, maybe they picked the wrong product.

As for the OEM versions of their software, it is suppose to only install on Dell machines but I've used mine on a laptop that a friend had (she bust her OEM disk) with her OEM key and it worked fine. Asked me to phone for activation, but the woman on the end of the phone just gave me a code and said nothing more about it.



The way Dell are going I'm not sure they will have any customers left. Along with the trouble I've had installing a WAP so I can use my new Axim X30 properly I've also so far had to get the X30 replaced.

It started off with a delivery that took forever as they gave my number to the courier incorrectly so they couldn't contact me to arrange delivery. Then when the machine arrived it kept locking and the only way to get it to work was to do a hard reset (not ideal).

Then they wanted me to wait up to 30 days for them to replace the unit, even though I payed for next business day replacement.
It went from bad to worse when they finally agreed to swap the unit the next day, I stayed in all day to receive it and it never turned up.
I rang them and had a bit of a go, but they insisted it would be here on Monday.
Well I must of scared them as it turned up at 9.00am on Monday, but then when it arrived the unit wouldn't install as the CD was knackered. So after another 2 hours on the phone to India I managed to get hold of someone who understood my almost perfect BBC English (how they cope with people from Newcastle or Scotland) who said that they couldn't order just a disk they would need to reorder EVERYTHING, thats right absolutely everything I ordered has to be boxed up and swapped with a brand new set tomorrow.



What a monumental waist of time. So in the end I'll have had 3 units, and two sets of everything else, and several delivery's to my house just to get a unit that works (I hope).

I've really gone off Dell and I won't be buying anything from them again until they get their act together and get out of India.

That company is seriously ****ed up.

[Matth]

If I understand the FX5200 - it does provide full DX9 functionality, but with a lot of software assistance to a fairly weak hardware - in AGP, it would be a budget card.

As I understand it, the Pixel shaders are in hardware, but slow unless Nvidia cheats on benchmarks, with the vertex shaders and other stuff heavily software assisted.

But until some maker is crackers enough to put a better chipset on PCI, it's the ONLY DX9 upgrade that will fit a PCI slot.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=61650 - £66.40 at ebuyer
http://www.dabs.com/uk/productview?quicklinx=2VK0 Different brand, cheaper - seems to be about the ballpark for them though

[Shaun]

Just to update you all, the delivery never happened so I'm sat here with a cardboard box containing my order waiting to go back, and it's not the same trying to access the net on a cardboard box!