Alienware M17x???

[mschwartz]

OK, after seeing one of these in real life, a voice in my head said "Yep, old son. You gotta have yourself one of those". But before I do have myself one of those, does anybody out there with a bit more savvy than me have an idea about how it would handle FSX. At the moment, I'm running FSX on my Dell XPS M1710 which has an Intel Core 2 T7600 2.33GHz CPU, 4GB of 1333MHz RAM and a NVIDIA Go 7900 GS 256MB graphics card, it did originally have a Go 7950 GTX 512MB card, but alas, that burnt out and I couldn't locate another to replace it with. I replaced the original 86GB 5400 RPM HDD with a 119MB SSD and did notice an improvement in load times. I can run at up to 1900 x 1200, but use FSX at 1600 x 1200 as none of my addon aircraft have widescreen cockpits and the VC's of the airliners that have them, arn't up to snuff.

I really only fly PMDG 744, LevelD 763, and the DA Fokker 70/100 with the very occasional Iris F-14 or PC9 bash. I don't use any autogen or ai traffic at all, and my scenery is set to Very Dense. I usually get well above 30 fps in flight and around 8-15 at the larger airports with only minor stuttering. Although, I did notice the difference in texture load times when I lost my my 512MB graphics card.

I'm the sort, that if it doesn't go fast enough just drop in a bigger engine. So with that, the alien thats taken my fancy is:

Intel i7-620M 2.67GHz Processor 

4GB DDR3 RAM 1333 MHz

Dual 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 Graphics Cards

SATA 500GB 7200RPM HDD

HD 1920x1200 Screen

Thanks

[Ryan Mason]

The alienware is pretty substandard these days, I have the Dell M1730, I looked at the alienware 17X but it wasn't up to speed of competitors, look at the Asus gaming rigs, there is one that is pretty decent with an i7 920 and Radeon 5870 I believe the last time I looked before getting the XPS.

[Wag]

To MSchwartz,  Having gone the Alienware M-17 route last April 2009, I would not do it. After putting a little over $5,000 into it, with all the bells and whistles, I liked the mobility, using Control Yoke, Rudder Peddles, and Thottle, and adding a flat screen TV for my gages, gps etc. I found it to be satisfactory for JUST FSX, not so when I wanted to load it down with extra scenery. One of the dual hard drives failed this past February, just when I wanted to take it on a month long trip. No such luck. I might add that it had Vista Ultra, which I changed out for Windows 7 Premium, but never put my flight sim back into the machine. I'll go to a more powerful unit, with a 24 inch wide screen next. I now use the M-17 for business, and  like it a lot for that purpose.

Walt