I have a Dell XPS 700 and it has a dual core in it, it has the original 700 mobo and I want to expand without having to rebuild. What quadcore CPUs can I upgrade to that will definitely work (and are compatible with the BIOS, since I know it's proprietary?). I know the Q6700 is one... Also, if I wanted to unlimit my selection, how difficult would it be to switch to the 720 board? Are there any special steps I'd have to take because it's a Dell and not a whitebox?
You will have to be careful. I know dell messed around with pins at one stage. Even though it was socket 775 it used a different layout or something along them lines so you would be forced to buy from dell. If you go changing the m/b you are getting close to the price of a new i3 system which would be alot faster. If you're running 2gb of ram you are better off getting another 2gb than getting a new cpu. I'd say you would be safe with any of the 65nm quads. Which are the q6xxx chips
When was the machine new? Simply that it seems that the original mobos that they came with prior to mid-late 2007 were shonky - Dell had offered a free mobo replacement with the option of paying extra to get a discounted Q6600... ...though that apparently expired on October 13, 2007. Now, it appears that the first mobo's didn't support quad core processors - "The BIOS update cannot enable support for Intel Quad-Core processors", so... ...imho, your best bet would be to either find a model no on the board & look that up &/or ask Dell themselves whether it's got the original or updated board in based upon your service tag before spending any money at all on it. Well, if you'd need to swap the mobo to put a quad core in, you may as well buy something more up to date (as has been suggested) than too much money on legacy stuff.
