X850XT Platinum Edition PCIe Video £264 from Dell [CLOSED]

Sultan3

Could anybody who has bought and installed one, post their comments about it please. I'm thinking about buying one.
My establishment gets discounts from Dell. After the discounts this card comes up at £350. So probably £264 is a good deal. But remember to buy the additional fan.. The heat radiated from this card possibly could cause some problems.

goofball

paul8811 wrote:

I would go for a second hand 6800gt that should be just under £200 & is & will be an excellent card for a couple of years

I've done alot of research over the last 2 days and found the perfect card for gamers. It's about £150 and the fastest 6600GT on the market.

Leadtek WinFast PX6600GT-TDH128 EXTREME GeForce 6600 GT 128MB PCI-E SLI

biglugs

Perfect card for gamers who have a PCI-E slot. Unfortunately I have an AGP motherboard at the minute, and no money.

amancalledchip

re Video card blwr assy.

why would we need this?
from ones ive seem, the fan is on the underside, and blows directly out the back of the PC using the second PCI slot .

anyone enlighten me please?

Sultan3

From Dell support forum:

"Have just completed a successful upgrade of my x300 SE graphics card with a Sapphire X850 XT PE graphics card on my Dimension 8400. I must say the expense was well worth it.


From reading your post you to have the 850 being shipped to you. I would recommend purchasing and installing the H3840 auxiliary blower fan before you install your new card due to what has been posted on the Dell support forum a number of times. Some individuals who have upgraded graphics cards with power needs over 75 watts have received after instillation a boot up warning that an additional fan card is needed. This warning, although seemingly nonsensical due to the fact that all top of the line graphics cards that I know of comes with a heatsink/fan combo solution already mounted on each card. Another fan will do you no harm since although the two fans are not silent all you really hear is a gentle air movement sound that does not come married to a high pitched whirl.



I have no way to guarantee that you will get this warning if you do not install the blower fan but the consequences for me were too dire. Starting off with the message itself then having to press F1 key every time I booted up my machine then from what I read this warning is for some impossible to get rid of after you have initially received it.



I installed the blower fan and the X850 together since I was thinking that this message was happening at the first boot up after installing new graphics card without this fan.



For my self, before I started, I updated my Bios to Dell’s latest, down loaded the latest ATI Catalyst 5.1 driver to my desk top to be installed after new card installations initial boot up.

Un installed from safe mode ATI control center and driver using add and remove programs found in Control Panel. This is a two step process you first remove control center then the driver. I did not think it was necessary to use Drive Cleaner since I was not upgrading from an ATI 300 SE that used driver version 4.11 to a 6800 ultra which would be completely different company drivers.





If you do install the blower take the darn thing apart. This is done by simply removing the two small Phillips screws that hold the fan to the mounting bracket. I must have spent a half hour playing with this fan trying to mount it as simply as the drawing in the owners manual, pages 88, 89, 90 made it look, it would not slide into the cutouts since they where machined incorrectly on my bracket. Without the fan mounted on the bracket the job of mounting the bracket is a piece of cake, then replace fan with the two screws, run power wire inside mounts that are shown in manual then plug power plug into outlet (you cant miss this outlet since it is just the right distance away from the fan after you have secured your cable within the mounts). One other thing the green disk rails that you removed from the exact position the fan will be mounted will handily mount on the fan bracket themselves the smaller two will clip on, on the left side as you face the bracket and the longer two will slide in the groves on the right.





You will find a pci-express graphics card 6 pin power plug attached to your PSU that will allow you to by pass the hard drive to PCI-express adapter that was packaged with my card and is mentioned on the ATI web site. This little extra makes me believe that I made the right choice when I bought this Dell PC, they could have used their old PSUs from the AGP days and added adapters for the motherboard and graphics card but they didn’t, they reengineering the PSU to be pci-express compatible.



Removing your old card is a very easy exercise even if you follow the owners Manuel all you have to do is raise the PCI tension bar carefully pull retention clip at bottom rear of card away from slot then gently pull up on card. It extracts very easily no heavy pulling needed. Then remove the next PCI slots cover or remove or reslot pci card that may be in needed position due to the fact your new card is a two slot card. I needed to remove my dial up modem card in order to leave space between the sound card and the graphics card for air flow. I may reinstall the modem card since the extra blower that I installed blows air directly onto the pci bus.



Installing the card was as simple you reverse the un install process with one added task and that is to plug power connector to card. The power connector wires where bundled tightly with all of the rest of the cables so I used a small pair of wire cutting pliers to cut the 2 ties removed power connector then retied bundle.

make sure to check all connections to fan and card and also check to see that your card is seated properly then close case reinstall all wire and bootup when windows desktop appears you will receive message that windows has detected new hardware click cancel you will receive this message again click cancel again then windows will warn you that the hardware found has does not have the software installed that will allow correct functionality ignore then proceed to double click icon for the ATI latest driver that you have stored on the desktop this will load the drivers and all the software that will be needed for your new card to function. Reboot and then video heaven.





Be gentle and remember to ground yourself by touching the metal on the case every time you touch any of the cards or other components.



Good luck to you and everyone else.



Your Dimension will really come to life no more 800 x 600 at low settings playing Doom3

amancalledchip

well it turned up

so much for the kit.
all i got was the card, and 2 discs, no power adapter or dvi/vga changer.Not that id need a changer, but a power cable would have been nice.

How things have changed since the days of 2x 12mb voodoo2 sli, and a 2d video card.

oh well
Now to order my motherboard and cpu.

h3r8z

Definitely a good price but I had a quick look around and found it slightly cheaper... Inc VAT: £245.96 ( £254.19 inc P+P)

I've not bought anything from the Company so I can't vouch for them but they look reasonable.

*** referral link removed by Board Guide ***

b44rch

h3r8z wrote:

Definitely a good price but I had a quick look around and found it slightly cheaper... Inc VAT: £245.96 ( £254.19 inc P+P)

I've not bought anything from the Company so I can't vouch for them but they look reasonable.

Unfortunately that's an X800XT, not X850XT PE, so it's slightly slower, probably worth the extra few quid to go for the better one.

BaBa

The graphics card in that link isn't even a X800XT, it's just a X800Pro, which retails at a considerably lower price than the X800XT let alone the X850XT Platinum Edition.

Rex_Mundi

It's not only a different card, but it's also a refferal link you've posted which you're not allowed to do in this board.