Dell XPS Studio 9100 upgrade questions

[jatyro91]

Looking to *possibly* upgrade my motherboard and CPU. I just recently got advice for getting a new graphics card and I'm worried about bottle necking, and possibly still not getting good performance in new, high end games. This is mostly theory considering how old my system is and the graphics card not actually arriving yet.

My system currently is:

OS: Windows 7 (64-bit)
Harddrive: Seagate ST31000528AS 1TB Hard Drive
RAM: 4GB
CPU: Intel Core i7 CPU 930 @ 2.8GHz
Graphics Card: Radeon HD 5670 (Plan on purchasing an MSI GTX 660)
PSU: 525w

I couldn't find any information on my motherboard. According to what I did find, there is no way to figure out exactly what mine is because Dell uses customized motherboards and each one is different.

I was told that if anything I should just upgrade my RAM some and I won't have any bottle necking issues, and my machine will be formidable once again. But I just wanted to double check here. If it is just the ram, could anyone suggest a product to buy that will fit with no modding or extra parts required?

Would http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=207D374AA5CA7304 be a good upgrade?

 

[tiny voices]

your CPU is fine for modern gaming. It will not bottleneck any GPU.

Upgrade the GPU. Also you could add 4gb more RAM. 16gb is stupid for gaming. 4gb is technically all you need. 8gb won't make any real improvements, but it will be nice for the future. You can game perfectly well on 4gb. Most games only use 3.3gb MAX.

 

[jatyro91]

your CPU is fine for modern gaming. It will not bottleneck any GPU.

Upgrade the GPU. Also you could add 4gb more RAM. 16gb is stupid for gaming. 4gb is technically all you need. 8gb won't make any real improvements, but it will be nice for the future. You can game perfectly well on 4gb. Most games only use 3.3gb MAX.

Is there any brand/product you recommend to get for a second 4gb stick? Preferably one that will for sure fit in my 9100 without any trouble.

 

[tiny voices]

Adding RAM is not the easiest. It would be better to just buy an 8gb kit. You can use Crucial's website to scan your computer and it will tell you about the ram speeds and latencies and things so you can match it up correctly. I recommend just buying an 8gb kit.

 

[Kisianik]

Adding RAM is not the easiest. It would be better to just buy an 8gb kit. You can use Crucial's website to scan your computer and it will tell you about the ram speeds and latencies and things so you can match it up correctly. I recommend just buying an 8gb kit.

Just to add, Dell generally don't like fancy RAM, go with general everything, avoid faster timings as well. Crucial is 99% guarantee to work with any Dell, the rest depends on your luck.

 

[jatyro91]

I purchased http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148544

On Crucials website it says its guaranteed to work with my system, so hopefully I won't run into any trouble.