I know off the top of my head that the XPS Gen2, The M170 (which is just a rename of the Gen2 I believe?), and the M1710 all use the same chassis. After some further looking I've confirmed video cards from the former 2 are using the same physical dimensions as M1710 video cards so physically they should fit right in. B

So the only question is wether the M1710 BIOs has support implemented. I ran across a thread (which I'm unable to locate again) which had a dump of the support list from a M1710 BIOs and the 6800 Ultra was on there (Along with about 30 other video cards, most of which I'm sure were never released in a compatible physical form factor) but that doesn't mean it neccesarily will work for a myriad of reasons.

Has anyone ever tried to make a Franken-XPS like this before? I'm probably going to order a 6800 Ultra and give it a go unless someone tells me I'm an idiot and this has already been tried. The card is only $27 on eBay interestingly enough. I already have a second maxed out XPS M1710 with 4GB of RAM, the fastest CoreDuo available (Yes, I know I could go to Core2 but w/e), and a Quadro FX3500M 512 (7950GTX) so I figured it would be fun to try to down-spec this for year 2003-2004 games. The 6800 series is also my "holy grail" video card of preferance so I may be slightly biased towards them for no legitimate reason. I've got a 7900GS in the XPS I'm planning to try this on and its complete overkill for games from 2003 (and yet my R9800 Pro Gen1 is too slow for some of them @ 1600x1200. So I need a middle man)