XPS m1710 upgrades

Apologies if this has been asked before this is my first post

Ok I have an m1710 about 2 years now,

2GB of ram, going to upgrade to 4GB

Im running XP Home, which I'm more than happy with, no bloatware no media direct, did a clean reinstall and took out the media direct partition which i never use for more space,

the question is, if i put in the 4gb upgrade (2x2GB) will all 4gb be recognized by my system, i saw a post about m1710 upgrades but they were talking about vista, and it on reconizing 3.5gb or something, but im on about XP

Secondly

Graphic card is nVidia 7900GTX and I would like to go up to 7950GTX is this possible a) for my OS, and b) my laptop

I also read that the m1710 doesnt support nVidia 8XXX series graphics cards, is this true.

And Finally

My Processor is an Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7400 @ 2.16GHz 2 (CPUs) <--- Exactly how dxdiag puts it,

Can I upgrade this aswell.



Thank you all for your time.

n00b in training

 

3.25 GB will be recognised by the system buddy. If you want the full 4GB to be seen you should go for Vista 64-bit instead but you say you are happy anyway.

99% of laptops will not allow you to upgrade the graphics card. Im guessing you can't on the 1710 either. I think I read of a Sager desktop replacement that can support SLI though.

 

You might be able to upgrade from a 7900GTX to a 7950GTX, since the M1710 was sold with both and the GPU is replaceable. But you'd need a 7950GTX that was made for a Dell. I doubt you could get an 8xxx series card working.

 

check ebay for a 7950GTX.. Or you can try dell and see if they will sell you one.. I was thinking about doing this to my 9400/e1705. But i think the 9400 mobo only supports the 7900 gtx.

 

XP 32bit will only see utilize 3gb ram. No 32bit OS can utilize more than 3.*gb RAM

7950GTX will be an costly upgrade

T7400 isnt the bottleneck of your system. No need to upgrade this. Its still a good performer. The best Socket M processor is a T7600 (2.3ghz) which is costly and you wont notice the performance increase.

 

As a previous m1710 owner,

IMHO

7950GTX isnt worth the cost (going from a 7900GTX)

Your CPU is good enough. You wont see much of an increase unless you go with a T7600G (overclockable from the BIOS) but this is a pricey upgrade. Would be better to just sell the 1710 and go with a 1730.

Stick with the RAM upgrade and consider Vista... With SP1 its more than stable (I had Vista Ultimate on my m1710 with no issues).

 

im running vista 64bit on mine and i dont see the full 4gb, i thought i read somewhere that there is something wrong with the chipset and these dells dont show the full amount? or is there a patch i need or something?

____________________________
Dont be too quick to judge