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Alienware systems

davidv

By davidv
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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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I'm looking at buying an Alienware system (I know building yourself can be cheaper but I'm looking at financing and that's not available with that route).

Primary reason for the PC is FSX - I want something that will run detailed aircraft over ORBX scenery with lots of weather and traffic at good framerates basically. I also play World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2, plus add Diablo 3 whenever it comes out.

Just have a few questions and need some advice on a few things....

For processors I'm looking at either...

Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 980x Extreme Six Core Processor (4.0GHz, 12MB Cache)

or

Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 980x Extreme Six Core Processor (3.73GHz, 12MB Cache)

Is the 4ghz over 3.73 going to give me a big difference?

For Ram I'm looking at 12GB probably - is 1600mhz that much better than 1333?

Video cards I've long been an nvidia fan but if ATI is on top of the game I can switch, which card is better?

Single 2GB GDDR5 ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5970

or

Single 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480

Will a crossfire or SLI setup hinder FSX? I believe it wont' help but I play other games that would take advantage so would having dual cards hurt my FSX performance?

For the hard drives I'm looking at...

600GB RAID 0 (2x 300GB SATA-II, 10k RPM, 16MB Cache HDDs)

Again RAID 0 afaik won't help FSX but does for other stuff - again would it hurt me to have it?

Just curious any other thoughts people have (other than build your own, again not an option unless newegg offers financing lol).

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Wolter van der Spoel Orbx VIP

Wolter van der Spoel

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For processors I'm looking at either...

Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 980x Extreme Six Core Processor (4.0GHz, 12MB Cache)

or

Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7 980x Extreme Six Core Processor (3.73GHz, 12MB Cache)

Is the 4ghz over 3.73 going to give me a big difference? not big but a noticable difference, specially with higher settings

For Ram I'm looking at 12GB probably - is 1600mhz that much better than 1333? 6 G's of RAM should suffice , unless you wanna run very heave paintshop and video programs

Video cards I've long been an nvidia fan but if ATI is on top of the game I can switch, which card is better?

Single 2GB GDDR5 ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD 5970

or

Single 1.5GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480 I'd say this one => EVGA GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked+ w/ High Flow Bracket and Backplate

Will a crossfire or SLI setup hinder FSX? I believe it wont' help but I play other games that would take advantage so would having dual cards hurt my FSX performance?

Crossfire or SLI will do nothing for fsX rather the contrary it hampers it

For the hard drives I'm looking at...

600GB RAID 0 (2x 300GB SATA-II, 10k RPM, 16MB Cache HDDs)

Again RAID 0 afaik won't help FSX but does for other stuff - again would it hurt me to have it?

or get some 10k rpm drives, saves hassle when you are not familiar with RAID setups

drive_C: OS W7 x64

drive_E: fsX

drive_F: REX OD

other drives the rest of the stuff, keep the OS as lean as possible, so move your my Documents folder to another drive, keeps the system less cluttered

hope it gives you a direction for what to look, at the end of the day the depth of your wallet is the most deciding factor ;)

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TenBlade Life Member

TenBlade

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Regarding ram, if it´s for FSX only, 6 GB is all you need, and more. 12 gigz if you work heavily with video editing and photoshopping. Of course go for 1600 Mhz, Mushkin Redline have the lowest CAS latency of 6. I can recommend those.

FSX seems to favour geforce cards. Don´t know how much SLI will do. Before the 400-series cards it was mosly agreed on that SLI would even reduce FSX performance. But I´ve seen more and more posts on 400-series cards in SLI, that seem to work well. If you´re not going for a three screen or more setup I´d say two 480´s is overkill and VERY power consuming (and you could heat your home with them :Just Kidding: ). The 460s are more power saving and seem to get good reviews, and are overclock friendly. I´d concider a SLI with two of those.

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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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Thanks guys.

Would you say two SLI 460's would be better than a single 480? (Certainly a good price and an article on Tom's hardware said this was the case - as I mentioned I do play other games so as long as SLI with the 400s doesn't hurt FSX that's no issue then).

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lthendrix Life Member

lthendrix

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Check my sig I got mine last year I have had 0 problems with alienware

also you came to the right place for advice.

the alienware web site is funny ...Just for fun I went through the customization for the top of the line gamming desktop and if you max out with the best ....or most expensive of everything you can end up with a 35 thousand dollar computer. !!!!!!

I will keep dreaming

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jgruschow Senior Member

jgruschow

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I have a 4GHz 980 o'clocked to 4.2 It's amazingly fast and cool .

I also have 2 o'clocked 480 video cards running in SLI. No problems. Don't let anyone tell you that FSX won't recognise SLI. They hum along perfectly, and give a near perfect picture.

Get yourself a motherboard the has a good space between the slots. This allows much better cooling. I have a DFI which has another advantage. It supports 2000 ram

Also get a good case with plenty of fans. An Antec 1200 is ideal. Don't spoil things with a cheap case.

Also get 2000 ram. 1600 is inadequate fo a fast computer. I have 12 gigs of ram. FSX never seems to use more than about 6 but the rest is available if needed.

Raid 0 will not help you at all. It is only good for backups.

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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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Ok current build i"m looking at...

Intel i7 980 factory oc'd to 4 ghz

12GB 1600 ram (they don't offer 6, or 2000)

2 300GB 10000rpm hard drives 32mb buffer (figure one OS and other programs, one dedicated FSX)

dual nvidia 480 1.5 GB

Is this going to be the "run FSX full out and get smooth performance all the time with AI, FTX and a nice plane" computer? I'm fine paying for it if that's the case, I just fear what's happened to me in the past that I get all excited, then see an increase in performance but not quite enough and then a year or two down the road swear at low framerates with some nice new addon lol.

This should rock Starcraft 2 and Wow on full settings of course, but the only reason to upgrade is to get back into flightsim and enjoy the latest greatest without the stuttering and fps drops.

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Spirit Flyer_old Life Member

Spirit Flyer_old

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Hi David,

Your choices seem to be going in the right direction, but sometimes with FSX's legacy code, less can be more, especially with the number of video cards. What is the cas latency of the ram they are proposing? Is including an SSD an option? I don't want you to be disappointed. Good luck on your purchase.

Kind regards,

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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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There's the option for a Samsung SSD but the price seems a bit over the top, I may add one myself later on. I'm a bit restricted by the fact it's prepackaged but I hope the Alienware brand lives up to what it's always claimed to be (I do realize it is now owned by Dell but I've been mostly happy up to now with my Dell XPS630 - it's just flightsim has gone beyond what it can do).

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John Lovell Life Member

John Lovell

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Just be careful cos Alienware use the lowest branded components.

Motherboard is total rubbish and looked down tighter then a Nun's chastity belt.

Memory is low brand aweful stuff

and Dell customer service is the worst ever.

I have an Alienware Aurora, although it performs pretty good ( cos I replaced the memory and overclocked it myself - 3.4ghz is the max I can get out of it  )....

I do wish I built my own instead

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TenBlade Life Member

TenBlade

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Don't make themistake of buying Rams 1600MHz at 9-9-9-24.....get something like that  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226121    the lower the timing the faster the rams will be, you will not like 1600MHz at 9-9-9-24 I promise you that....

Just the ones I recommended (and got) ;)!

If you like to compare ram speed it can get confusing when you have both the frequency and the CAS Latency to take into account. So, if you divide CAS with freq. you get an arbitrary figure. Like mushkin redline: 6/1600=0.00375 , and if you think 1800MHz CAS 8 is faster, think againg 8/1800=0.00444

B

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Spirit Flyer_old Life Member

Spirit Flyer_old

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Don't make themistake of buying Rams 1600MHz at 9-9-9-24.....get something like that  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226121    the lower the timing the faster the rams will be, you will not like 1600MHz at 9-9-9-24 I promise you that....

Just the ones I recommended (and got) ;)!

If you like to compare ram speed it can get confusing when you have both the frequency and the CAS Latency to take into account. So, if you divide CAS with freq. you get an arbitrary figure. Like mushkin redline: 6/1600=0.00375 , and if you think 1800MHz CAS 8 is faster, think againg 8/1800=0.00444

B

Bjorn,

...and if I remember right, I bought my RAM because you recommended it to me on AVSIM, or was it the other way around, or somebody else pointed us both toward it? Small world but big circle we are in!  8)

Kind regards,

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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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Thanks guys. I figure worst case I can replace the ram - it's not that expensive, and for everything together pricing it out vs newegg Alienware comes up cheaper - and again they finance which is my only option right now (not smart I know lol).

I think I am going to get this system - I'll do the 2 10k rpm hard drives and wait until SSD is cheaper.

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John Lovell Life Member

John Lovell

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Good for you!

In still is a pretty good system and will give you great performance in FSX.

They will probably load it with an early bios so you might wanna upgrade to their latest vers which is A09

Replace that Ram for sure and you will be onto a winner.

With my Alienware ( see sig ) I have all my sliders at max other than:

Autogen - very dense

Water - High x2

Traffic - 55%

Cars - 17 %

My frames usually stay in the mid 20s and drop to about 15 in Seattle

Cooling is pretty good -

Idle around 35 - 40c

Underload 50 - 65c

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davidv Senior Member

davidv

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Looks great John!

I actually changed my mind last minute though lol  :-[    - reviewed the finances and the price of the system is really more than I should spend, going to look at building myself now haha. I'll certainly take all the advice in this thread towards what I'm going to do though.

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Heiko Glatthorn Orbx VIP

Heiko Glatthorn

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Intel i7 980 factory oc'd to 4 ghz - this expensive CPU is asking for 5 GHz, not 4...

12GB 1600 ram (they don't offer 6, or 2000) - bit funny that you can't choose 6 GB if you ask me... Which brand and latency are those RAM ?

2 300GB 10000rpm hard drives 32mb buffer (figure one OS and other programs, one dedicated FSX) - you want to have a dedicated SSD drive for FSX, believe me...

dual nvidia 480 1.5 GB - perfect !

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