Hi gang,Don't post much...but now I have a reason to. Just took a leap into the great abyss on a new Dell XPS Gen 5 with a few teeth on it:3.2GHz Dual Core, 800FSB2GB DDR2 SDRAM800GB RaidATI Radeon X850 XT PE24" Widescreen Flat PanelThe stork is just 2 weeks away. Trying my best to obliterate FS9 (and the next release as well...). Anybody out there benchmarking FS9 on an XPS yet? Gen 4 or 5??? Feedback appreciated.Got Ultimate Traffic, PMDG 737 and FSNav on board....Thanks much,Mike CostonDell 8200 2.0GHz Laptop1GB SDRAMNVIDIA GeForce4 440 GoDell 20" Flat or Gateway 21" VX1100

Hi Mike,FS will not take advantage of your soon to be arriving dual core technology. No one knows now whether FS10 will, though (cept MS). The system looks pretty solid for gaming. Hope you enjoy it.GregP.S. If by chance you don't like that widescreen feel free to send it to me. :-)

wow 24" Widescreen Flat Panel id love to see FS2004 on that. is that an intel or an AMD, i hope its an AMD.

Thats a nice system; it must have cost you an arm and a leg.Last time I checked the price of the 5, it was about $1000 more than the top end Gen 4.And its an Intel, as Dell does not sell AMDs. Well not yet anyway.

Could it be this flat screen?Drool...Sure is purty!!Greg

Yep Dells Monitors is always nice. Much thanks to they like to hire Sony to make their monitors :)

Thanks Greg,Keeping one eye on Bill's X-Box 360 as well...need to monitor that puppy pretty closely just to see where the team's headed with that...!Anyway, I'll be sure to post performance parameters when I get FS9 spooled-up and underway though....maybe it can help some others with making some intelligent upgrade selections down the road.P.S. Yeah, if there's the slightest scratch on the 24" monitor when it arrives...then it's yours pal...! :-lol

Yeah Rob,with the monitor, it comes to about 4G's. You know full well how quickly these machines depreciate the very minute you press 'Order'.Mike

I got the 24" DELL Ultra Widescreen Monitor. but not the kind of computer you have. ;)I got to use it for 2 hours and I had to travel after that. Love the widescreen monitor. VC in it works without distortion. The in 2D the panel gets stretched but the outside view is OK. You get to see more.Search this hw thread..there was another thread on this topic.The rich color and depth etc... kicks @ss. Far far better than my 19" CRT monitors.Flying the flight1's ATR-500 in VC mode with Active Camera's movements and approaching megascenary/megacity with Fly Tampa's San francisco airport is breathtaking.I suggest, you get a second monitor an ELO touch screen for panels, radio stack, GPS etc that you can operate with your finger.:)

>Love the widescreen monitor. VC in it works without>distortion. The in 2D the panel gets stretched but the outside>view is OK. You get to see more.Manny,can you elaborate a little more on what you mean by "you get to see more external display" on the monitor?I look forward to the day when we solve the stereoscopic and panoramic limitations of single monitors. Once they do that....then turning base leg will be a whole new experience!But on that note....there's an article in Popular Science on a new holographic screen projection technology that uses multiple (100+) layers of laminated screens to create an amazing illusion of depth. (Think fish tank!) Makes sense.But we've certainly come a long way from MSFS on an Atari already.Mike

Mike,In VC mode.. I see more to the left and right ...than I would on a 4:3. Its like.. if you stand say 10 feet from a window...a square window (like a regular monitor)... now say you leave the ht of the window the same...but you carve out a little to the right and to the right... making it wide... you get to see more to the right and to the left.Thats exactly it.

I have an XPS Gen 4, 3.80 Ghz, with X850 XT PE card and two flat DELL panels, 20" and 19". Performance with FS9 is very good. I run 1600x1200x32 on one (primary) monitor and 1280x960 on the other. Frames range from mid-teens at extremely dense airports with 100% UT to something over 200/sec at cruise in 3rd party jets and clear skies. Average fps is about 60 with most sliders maxed right except for autogen and scenery which are VERY DENSE,but clouds set to 100% and visibility set to 100nm and clouds 60 nm. I set frames at cap of 32; I sometimes unleash frames to unlimited but don't perceive any real difference. Add-ons include PMDG NG, NAMC YS-11, Dash 7, VC-10, Aero Commander, Howard 500. All VCs work better on the XPS although the PMDG VC challenges the system more than I expected in terms of texture reloading.The images on my panels are often incredibly lifelike and rich with wonderful saturation and very good impressions of depth. The sim is fluid all the time now compared to my older DELL 8200, 2.53Ghz, Ti 4600.You should get excellent performance with your new DELL. Set sliders full right and go down from there if you need to.I have DELL packaged ATI drivers, but everything works so well, I don't think I will upgrade anything at all. You might have the same experience.Enjoy your new machine. The blue bios generated panel lighting on the XPS (which can be changed six different ways) is a trip in itself!JS

Thanks JS,Great read. I presume that you're overclocking up to 3.8 or no (?) I gotta get around to trying out the dual monitors as well since I got a couple of Dell FP 19"'s on some other PC's.Also glad to hear about the mid-teens in the major ballparks though. I usually nest at most of the major hubs when I handle the big iron so serious frames here (especially with UT maxed out) mean a lot. Just wish the ramp/gate experience can be tightened-up a little better (as accomplished in some of the 3rd party airport releases) to reflect more of the real world gate alignments. Dense Autogen and the weather engine will be my primary focus on the initial tweeks. Always felt like I was short-changing the sim by lowering the cloud vis radius to anything less than 80-100nm out, so I'm certainly looking forward to over-the-horizon processing power on desktops one day in the not-so-distant future (will probably require ice packs to cool the CPU at that rate...)Came across an excellent bench test comparison between the Ferarri PC's out there at ExtremeTech. Pretty good charts on handling FS9:http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1788922,00.aspMike

The 3.80 Ghz processor is a regular INTEL non overclocked processor. DELL produced a number of these for 3 months and then suddenly stopped. Don't know what happened. I don't tweak or overclock anything. Don't know how, don't want to invalidate the warranty (!)It works great.JS

I have basically the same system you have. (Dual Raid/SATA drives) and confirm your stats.My only issue...one which I have experienced in all former rigs is a slight...oh...shimmering or "wavy" pattern on the autogen buildings.Never have been able to fully eliminate that problem.Regards,Jim