My Dell 8400 was stolen the other day during a break in. It was a 3.2 GHz, 1Gb ram machine and it ran FSX without a problem. The insurance company is offering me a Dell XPS 410 as an equivalent, and if it actually is an equivalent I will be very satisfied. Some of the features are Intel E6400 dual core 2.13 GHz, nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS, and Vista business version. Everything else sounds at least as good as what I had before.Does this sound like a reasonable replacement? I don't understand why the old one is 3.2 GHz and the new one is 2.13 GHz. I can have cash instead of the computer but I'm not prepared to spend a lot of time researching this. (I'd rather be flying)Thanks for your help.JL Woodward

Hi JL,All things equal, you should be very happy with the performance of the E6400. Intel has revamped their processor architecture and the difference is quite impressive. The numbering scheme makes little sense and is only a vague indicator of their relative performance.This link will give you a rough idea of its abilities with various utilities and applications: http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.html Regards,Jim KarnNOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

>My Dell 8400 was stolen the other day during a break in. It>was a 3.2 GHz, 1Gb ram machine and it ran FSX without a>problem. The insurance company is offering me a Dell XPS 410>as an equivalent, and if it actually is an equivalent I will>be very satisfied. Some of the features are Intel E6400 dual>core 2.13 GHz, nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS, and Vista business>version. Everything else sounds at least as good as what I had>before.Too bad about the theft. But one positive thing, is that the comp they are replacing it with, is much better.You can't look at raw ghz clock speed anymore. The replacement computer should perform better in FSX, so you should be happy for that.You're even getting a DirectX-10 compatible video card (8600) which will come in handy for FSX + DX10 update.Do you take the cash or the replacement computer? I guess that is up to you; probably if you don't want to do homework, I'd take the computer and run. It will run FSX better than what you had.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

How much cash are they offering?And yeah that is better than your older systemEDIT: sorry that sounded nosy....I mean how much are they offering because it would be good to know just in case you could build/buy a better one with the cash

Thanks very much for your replies. I will feel a lot better now. It has been a very bad week and I didn't realize a burglary could be so mentally draining. They offer the option of cash, but most likely I will go with the computer. The insurance company has been very helpful (must have a lot of experience!).