Jeff,I bought my memory when I bought most of the rest of my system back in Sep last year. RAM was much more expensive then, and the plan was to have 2GB for FSX / XP and an extra 1GB for the OS overhead when transitioning to Vista, so 3GB it was.If I were buying today, without a doubt I would go 2GB for XP and 4GB for Vista 64. IMO 4GB for XP is a waste, as not all of it will be utilised by this OS, unless the system will eventually be upgraded to Vista 64. Also IMO, don't purchase Vista 32 with a new system today, as the 64-bit driver scene has improved markedly of late to make Vista 64 a no brainer nowadays.Vista 32 is a bit of a wierd one, as it needs more than 2GB to perform like XP does with 2GB, but anything over 3.25GB can't be seen by the OS. If I was going Vista 32, I would still consider 3GB as an optimal RAM installation.Gary

Ahh, ok, yes, I forgot about Vista 64...probably which (the O/S) is what it should have been to begin with? LOL.So 4GB with Vista 64 would be the ideal setup then? I haven't seen that offered yet on Dell's site. After XMAS might be a different story then, I hope.:-)

Sorry, didn't see your post until now. I stumbled across that hotfix in my recent travels and all is good now on the Vista / FSX / multi-monitor front. Thanks for pointing it out anyway.Gary

Jeff, check out AVADirect, you will get much better component choices from them if you are looking for a PC builder.

Alrighty, I just finished the last XP run, so now I have a mountain of data to wade through to make sense of. I'll make a new post to report the results and some conclusions I will make, then I'll bundle up the benchmark package and post it to the AVSIM library for others to suffer through if they want to ;-) A big thanks to those that helped determine the runs I did!Gary

Hi Phil,I took his comment very much as humor, only. I didn't see anything in his comment to suggest that you would suppress this information as if to hide anything.I interpreted what he meant as to say that - "Hey, this is great work, worthy of having you beta test the product. But, wait, if you're beta testing, then you can't talk about your results. That's no good!"IOW, more a byproduct of the beta testing rules than any "malicious" intent.That's the way I read it anyway,Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Actually, lol, Dell probably has what I would want, it just not updated on the page.When I bought my first XPS, I called directly after the order and found out I could match things up better.Example: if you look you'll see they offer a 7.1 sound blaster, but no 7.1 speakers...I bet they'd sell you the creative 7.1 speakers to go with the new sound card also, it's just not listed on the site for some reason.I don't really want to build...hehe. I'm lazy like that.

Thomas,Your interpretation is exactly what I meant. I was certainly not inferring that Phil or anyone at MS wants to intentionally suppress the work and information that Gary has produced. My sincere apologies if I have caused any misunderstandings or ill feelings.I also do not want to send Gary's thread off on a different tangent, so if anyone would like to discuss this further, please PM me.Ted