Optiplex 960 vs 760

[Kaiser]

Unlike a lot of venders, model to model on Dells do indeed tend to be improved or different. I went from 2 760s to 2 960s at one of my places. One ran Vista 64 and the other ran Server 2008. Took the drives out of the 760s and sure enough booted in the 960 with no problems and without using Acronis Universal restore. Well I can tell you that the 960s are a HUGE improvement over the 760. I never had chance to diagnose it because I am ont always at this location as it is my girlfriends condo, but while running eMule with major connections, the Server 2008 would BSOD every couple days, and restart on its own. I made sure all hardware drivers were up to date and BIOS was the newest. I never had a chance to debug it. So I throw the drives in the 960s with Quad Core 3.0 and there are no more problems. I will do a testing environment on this to try to break it down for MS and Dell, as Server 2008 should be able to handle a shit load of connections. Anyway, the newer box has not had a hickup yet, and runs smoother than it ever did. No I am not comparing it to a PowerEdge, but I am saying there are major differences and I suspect it is due to firmware as the chipsets are very similar. Just some words...