Dell studio xps

nano267

I have a Dell Studio xps 435MT with windows 7x64 with
Intel(R) Core(TM)i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Memory (Ram) 8.00GB
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4800
Hard Drive 500GB
Need to know if possible to upgrade this or buy new from Dell
again.£400 for upgrade and maybe £750 for new .Mainly used for web browsing
some photo editing , son is now starting to play games on it and it is beginning to freeze and shut down done a clean install but happens again after a while.
Any help greatly appreciated as first time posting

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

I have a Dell Studio xps 435MT with windows 7x64 with
Intel(R) Core(TM)i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
Memory (Ram) 8.00GB
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4800
Hard Drive 500GB
Need to know if possible to upgrade this or buy new from Dell
again.£400 for upgrade and maybe £750 for new .Mainly used for web browsing
some photo editing , son is now starting to play games on it and it is beginning to freeze and shut down done a clean install but happens again after a while.
Any help greatly appreciated as first time posting

Your computer is plenty powerful for what you want (light gaming, web browsing etc).

Firstly, I'd make sure everything is up to date (Windows, drivers etc.). You say you've done a clean install? Of Windows or just the game? A clean install of Windows would do no harm, and would speed the computer up a bit if it's not been done before.

It sounds like your graphics might be overheating. Monitor your temperatures with MSI Afterburner while gaming. Might as well do the same for the CPU, too, with CoreTemp.

See where that gets you, and wait for more input.

nano267

The GPU is at 79% constantly that,s without any games running as i haven,t got a clue how to play them . Done a clean install of windows
and updated drivers ,cleaned out all the fans to see if that would help uncle - Sam -ie said i needed a new graphics card ?
but would that suit the psu i have and the mob ?

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

The GPU is at 79% constantly that,s without any games running as i haven,t got a clue how to play them . Done a clean install of windows
and updated drivers ,cleaned out all the fans to see if that would help uncle - Sam -ie said i needed a new graphics card ?
but would that suit the psu i have and the mob ?

79%? Is that GPU usage? What are your temperatures in Celsius. You have a 4800 series card, which one specifically? I don't know much about that card as they're a bit dated, but I think they'd reasonably manage medium settings in games. What resolution/graphics settings are you playing at?

srsly78

Some Studio XPS laptops have a design flaw with gpu overheating. Dell replaced mine (with a brand new model) for free when I contacted support. I did have to keep complaining to them tho, the first time they took it back and "repaired" it but it didn't fix the problem. Only after second complaint did I get replacement.

The gpu (graphics card) is only really used when playing games or running other graphical software, so the laptop worked fine except for this.

nano267

That would be in Celsius and the card is Rad-eon HD 4850 (RV 770 PRO ) Dell.
If it is the card that's causing the problem could you recommend something for me also sorry for the delay this is all new to me and i am middle age woman trying to fix this so bear with me.

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

That would be in Celsius and the card is Rad-eon HD 4850 (RV 770 PRO ) Dell.
If it is the card that's causing the problem could you recommend something for me also sorry for the delay this is all new to me and i am middle age woman trying to fix this so bear with me.

Don't worry we're here to help

So the card is 79 degrees according to Afterburner? And this is while you're not doing anything (except browsing the web?). Is the fan loud at this time?

nano267

srsly78 I should have said this is a desktop.

nano267

No Gumbi fan is not loud no more than when i first bought it . I do have 5 pages open now but it happens sometimes when only 1 page opened
and strange noise coming from the fans mouse gets very slow and then it shuts down . I did noticed that it was very hot at the back of it.

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

No Gumbi fan is not loud no more than when i first bought it . I do have 5 pages open now but it happens sometimes when only 1 page opened
and strange noise coming from the fans mouse gets very slow and then it shuts down . I did noticed that it was very hot at the back of it.

Would you answer the questions I asked above? If the graphics card is 79 degrees while browsing the web, there is definitely a problem with cooling. You are reading the temperature using Afterburner, yes?

nano267

yes using the Afterburner.

nano267

sorry forgot to add that the fan is very quite since i cleaned them out .

nano267

also got some readings from the Core Temp
TJ.max 100 c
core # 0 min 42 c load 4%
core # 1 min 39 c load 0%
core # 2 min 41 c load 10%
core # 3 min 43 c load 2%

SickBoy

The Studio XPS 435 uses triple channel memory and you have 8gb installed.
This suggests you are mixing and matching your memory sizes. There's 6 memory slots on that board I think. How many are populated?

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

also got some readings from the Core Temp
TJ.max 100 c
core # 0 min 42 c load 4%
core # 1 min 39 c load 0%
core # 2 min 41 c load 10%
core # 3 min 43 c load 2%

Those sound OK, relatively speaking. What I need you to do is to answer my question above. Your graphics card is how hot while browsing the web? Are you sure it's 79 degrees?

nano267

Sickboy theres a total of 16 gbytes installed since last year done with Crucial scanner had no problem with them .

nano267

Yes just checked it again hovering at 79 c sometimes 80 c with a big red bar across it.

Gumbi

nano267 wrote: »

Yes just checked it again hovering at 79 c sometimes 80 c with a big red bar across it.

That's very hot, especially since you are doing nothing graphically intensive (browsing the web uses virtually no graphics card processing) I think 4800 series card are hot anyway, but perhaps yours is too hot. I don't know. I would wait for more experienced input here.

SickBoy

nano267 wrote: »

Sickboy theres a total of 16 gbytes installed since last year done with Crucial scanner had no problem with them .

So how many of the memory slots are populated?
Might be worth populating only 3 of the slots, they're colour coded so populate the 3 pink or 3 blue slots and monitor the stability.
I might be way off base here but 16gb just sounds like a weird number for tri-channel memory configuration.