........and order my new FSX computer, and would appreciate any comments on my choice. I have to have a laptop in my situation so I'm just a couple of key presses from shooting my dell credit card with an Alienware M17x. I previously used a XPS 1710 (STOLEN!) and it actually did a very good job with framerates locked at 30 and medium settings. I chose not to go with SLI since it seems it is only a small advantage in higher AA, resolutions, etc. Instead I opted to spend more for the CPU since it can easily be OC'd to 3+ GHz. Also the SSD (solid state hardrive) should load scenery real quick.. With my EPP discount it prices out just below 3K, what do you guys think?

........and order my new FSX computer, and would appreciate any comments on my choice. I have to have a laptop in my situation so I'm just a couple of key presses from shooting my dell credit card with an Alienware M17x. I previously used a XPS 1710 (STOLEN!) and it actually did a very good job with framerates locked at 30 and medium settings. I chose not to go with SLI since it seems it is only a small advantage in higher AA, resolutions, etc. Instead I opted to spend more for the CPU since it can easily be OC'd to 3+ GHz. Also the SSD (solid state hardrive) should load scenery real quick.. With my EPP discount it prices out just below 3K, what do you guys think?

That hard drive is pretty small.Have you also checked out the Asus line of gaming notebooks?I have an Asus G1S. It's out-of-date now, but if I were to buy another gaming notebook, I'd go Asus again without a second thought.

That hard drive is pretty small.Have you also checked out the Asus line of gaming notebooks?I have an Asus G1S. It's out-of-date now, but if I were to buy another gaming notebook, I'd go Asus again without a second thought.

It's an SSD. They don't come any bigger (at a reasonable price).Cheers,Noel.

It's an SSD. They don't come any bigger (at a reasonable price).Cheers,Noel.

You may want to do a little research on SSD performance in FSX. The last I heard, they aren't there yet--a good hard drive would still outperform an SSD. I believe other components haven't technically caught up yet creating a bottleneck. Anyway, not sure of the details, but I know that was the "general" case. I would do some more research, but something tells me you're throwing money away on a SSD for that system.

That hard drive is pretty small.Have you also checked out the Asus line of gaming notebooks?I have an Asus G1S. It's out-of-date now, but if I were to buy another gaming notebook, I'd go Asus again without a second thought.

Thanks Bryan, I'll take a look. I get an EPP discount on Dell thru work of 16% which is a big deciding factor for me. As far as the size of thehardrive, my prev. laptop only hd 80GB and it wasn't hardly half full so 256GB should be fine for me. And there's room for another drive laterif need arrises.Steve

You may want to do a little research on SSD performance in FSX. The last I heard, they aren't there yet--a good hard drive would still outperform an SSD. I believe other components haven't technically caught up yet creating a bottleneck. Anyway, not sure of the details, but I know that was the "general" case. I would do some more research, but something tells me you're throwing money away on a SSD for that system.

Yeah I did read an article or 2 and you're correct to a point. I think it's kind of a trade-off in seek times and throughput. Maybe I need to look at that again, thanks.Steve

I snagged this pic off of a review which gives some comparisons between SSD and very fast HDD. While the one that will be in my Dell (Samsung) is not the fastest in all cases" it's certainly still very fast so I should be OK.Steve