Prophet4no1

Looks like you will need a new mobo to overclock unless you can find a BIOS that alows you to overclock that one. Reflashing is always a little scary. One mistake and you have a brick for a computer.

Good points, but I have to counter a couple. The destroyed terrain can still be navigated if you are smart. People tend to go for the frontal assult, that's suicide. While your team is assulting the one X-com, attack from the ignored flank where the other one was and come in from the rear. I'm not sure you are using Q correctly. You have to aim at a freindly that has what you need and press it. Try holding it down for a sec. If he is a medic he will get a radio call and you will appear on his map as needing help. Same for every other classes and vehicles.

I was about to say the same thing. you would think all would do thal. If we get that, destroyed pilots, maybe the infantry can do the same. An HE round should make a bloody mess when it hits you.

But the other part of my point was there are other prebuilt systems that are better. Or at last more bang for your buck. Let's say the other one is $300 cheaper but both have CPU water cooling. I can then upgrade the other to water cool the GPU/GPUs and have them overclocked even more. This iwill in most cases get you more than just 8fps. It will most likely add a year to the expected "life" of the PC. Meaning the time before you need an upgrade. So, at this point I have spent about the same mony with company X on a faster system, prebuilt. Just add power and go. I've never orderd a PC with water cooling on it already so I would unhook all the power in the PC ecept the water cooling system and doo a leak test to be safe for 24hrs. Just incase something got loose in transit.

My track IR 5 has been acting a bit funky. It will get very erratic and loose connection with the Pro clip. I have noticed that if I go into the setup software and click the TrackClip and then go back to TackClipPro it works fine. Any idea what is causing this?

If you guy high quality parts, these issues are few and far. Make sure you are buying form good companies. As for water cooling, aDIY system is fine but NEVER build your own components. Buy the parts form a company that specializes in water cooling. Otherwise you are asking for some very expensive trouble. ASUS and eVGA are propbably the two best companies to get things like motherboards from. Very high quality. PSU, make sure you get ones with Japanise compasitors. They are better and last longer. When you go DIY you have to do some research. If you just through the system togethor from random parts, you will proabably have issues. If the parts are high quallity the RMA's will be few and far.

I swear by EVGA. there hardware is built with gamers/tweakers in mind. Awesome BIOS for tweaking and overclocking till your eyes bleed. Biggest factors in building a rig. Get quality harware. I use eVGA mobo's and vid cards. If you are cutting cost and going with the older LGA775, make sure you get a good chip. The Q6600 is a great one for overclocking the crap out of, but is a big heat builder. The "extreme" chips are a little more userfreindly and the larger caches make for slightly better perfromance. The new i7 chips are a lot easier to overclock. Especially on the new X58 boards. Regarless of the hardware the biggest factor is cooling. You need to make sure you have a high end cooler, either really good air cooler or water cooling. Also a case with very good ventalation. I've rescently started using Cooler Master for my system builds I do for people. They have some classy looking cases like the 690 II Advance but still provide massive amounts of cooling. If you want the more crazy looking cases, well, they have those too. Genral features across the board are great ventalation, really good cable managemnt, dust filters, toolless cases. Basic build I use with exact components varied depending on budget of who I am building for: Cooler Master case eVGA Mobo eVGA GPU OCZ ram Everest PSU WD or OCZ HD DVD drive varies on what Newegg has a deal on. Most are about the same as long as it's SATA.

That was pretty cool. The closet to that I ever witnessed in person was at the Blue Angles demo in Duluth, MN 2 years ago. It started to rain during the demo flight so they cut it short, but not before one of the solo's did a left to right transonic fly by. With the rain you could see the distinct white disc around the aircraft just aft of the middle of the fuselage. The only time I have ever seen that. I totally geeked out.

I'v been using the X line since teh X36. They have been great for me. I admit, I liked my X45 better than the X52. But it died and I had to get a new one.

Nice! That would be pretty hard to do I imagine.

Again you miss the point. My rig is 3 years old now. When I built it, it was near top of the line. Yours is obviously a little newer. Comparing my older rig to a newer one is not apples to apple. My rig to yours is not apples to apples. Comparing yours to say a Falcon NW sestem of simaler specs is. And in that case, you get more PC. Stop being so fixated on my admittedly aged system. This is where you miss my point entirely. Like a said, twice now. If you compare the performace of all the "performance" rigs you can buy for the various builders, the Alienwares fall short. If you go that route. I've sad this a few times and you keep missing that. You call me arrogant when I am only telling the facts and I've already had at least one other person back me up on this. Let be put this in a differnt way. Alienware - Fance case and mass produced. Esentially stock performance on the hardware provided. Other performace brands - More bang for your buck for the most part. Many are hand built to spec of the customer to a larger degree. You get higher performance per dollar spent and still get a pertty nice case to look at. Mom and pop super PC - Less costly yet and if they know what they are doing really high performance for the buck. May be lacking on prettiness but will pack a punch in the raw power department. DIY - As good as your wallet and skill can take you. No limit other than the hardware limitations. Genrally the least expensive and most flexable. You get any case you want and can mod like crazy. All you need is some paint, a dremil, and some skill. Now do you see what I am saying? My point in simplest terms, dollar for dollar you get more bang for your buck with just about any other builder or going DIY. I'm not being arrogant. I'm just telling like it is. I know my rig is aging. No dought about it. I know there are faster systems out. So again, forget about my system vs your system. That's not what this is about. Mine has older hardware in it. We know this. If I was to do out and build my own version of say the Area 51 system now, I could build it cheaper and faster than what they are selling. Or, I could buy one from Falcon NW, Voodoo, or Darkside PC's and spend a little less and get better performance. Better yet, use the cash save for better cooling and up the overclock more, even buy it maxed with the better cooling. If you still do not get what I am saying after this, it's a true facepalm moment.

My point is in an apples to apples comparison. By crap I mean you are not getting the bang for your buck. You pay Porsche prices and get Mustang performance. Sure it's fast, but not as fast as the other option. When compared to similar rigs from other builders, the performance is lacking on the Alienware side. There overclocked systems suffer of stability issues the other guys do not have. In many cases the high priced systems on air cooling you can get one on water with faster overclocks for the same price or less. That is a crap system from a performance builders stand point. Again apples to apples is what I am talking about. I should hope your system is a bit faster since it has higher end parts and SLI. The badge on the case is not the reason why it's faster. The fact is, I could build that system for less and probably get better performance. Or, buy one from one of the more pure performance PC builders out there and still cost less or at least get more in it for the same price. You obviously missed the whole point of this argument.

I'm running Vista 64 so I can use all my ram. Never said I was on 32 bit. Crysis runs fine on my system on maxed settings. No issues. The fact you have an alienware over an other system has nothing to do with it. You have SLI, I don't yet. Your processor is a little faster. My rig 3 years old now and is still hanging just fine. And it only cost me $1100 to build. Inclusding swapping vid cards.

Mine has been fast enough to pimp slap every game I've tossed at it. Only odd balls are FSX and the occasional slowdown in Empire Total War. But hte Total War one seems to be from lack of cooling. It makes my overclocked GTX260 get really hot. Around 65-70. That's the point it starts to artifact and can lock up. Also, I can push 3ghz on the CPU, but cooling is again an issue. That's why I orded the new case. I'm going water cooling so I shopuld be able to do 3ghz+ with no issues. Right now on air cooling, 2.69 is about the limit. Since my rig runs all my stressing games at 30-40 fps and everything else from 60-200 fps I feel little need to do a full upgrade just yet. The Hyperthread ability of the i7 is totally useless right now since ther is no software that even fully uses my Q6600. The Q6600 is the overclockers best freind. For a LONG time it held the top of the speed charts on the Futurmark benchmarks. The cooler running i7 is capable of running much faster though on water. As for ram, mine is overclocked at 950mhz right now, so about the same as yours. Don't need 8gb because I do not do video editing. Again, I have never seen my log file have a full 4gb in it, so why get more? It's pointless. Maybe in a couple yers it will be needed, but whil games are still using 32 bit code, it's pointless because the keep in mind that ony 3.25gb is usable in the system. So after all that, I put my over 10 years of of experiance into answering the OP's question. In the end, Alienware is only worth the extra cash if you feel you need a bigger e-penis or REALLY love the case. Otherwise DIY or buy a rig from a better company.

Even at that rate, there are WAY better system builders than Alienware. Darkside PC's, Voodoo, Falcon Northwest, just to name a few. Alienware has a bad rap now as crap systems. They have for a few years. You pay a lot and get little return compared to other rig builders. You only have to do a quick bit of research with some of the PC testing sites. Back in the day is was Alienware and Falcon Northwest at the top. After the buy out of Alienware everything went down the drain. If bound on buying a system, it would be a good idea to do some reasearch and NEVER go by the company site for details other than the order sheet. They all claim to be the best.

I've been using Evrest on the last few builds. Rock solid so far and 85%+ efficiancy. I'm actually ordering parts for a build for a buddy soon. It will be a screamer.

That's a rare issue. Of all the systems I've built of the years, I have never had a MOBO fail. I have cooked a couple processors, but that was my fault. Only thing I ever have fail on a soemwhat normal basis is my HDs. I guess I over work them? I did have an EVGA 8800GTX crap out on me once. EVGA no longer was making that cars so they sent me a 9800GTX to replace it. No extra cash paid.

A buddy of mine had an Alienware system from about a year after Dell baught them out. He wanted to overclock but could not figure out how so I went over to help. Turned out that the Dell classic of locked BIOS caried over to the Alienware systems. So, no overclocking that thing. We ended up building a new computer using the Alienware case a year later.

I just choose wiser investments. I'll pay for function. That's why I just odered a new Cooler Master 690 II Advanced case. Clean slick style with room for dual radiators for the water cooling that is going in later this year. This thing is all about performance and still looks good.

That's a hugely differnt comparison. If you want that performance and do not want the DIY, you can buy non Alienware and save cash. It's like buying a the Lexus version of the Solara. It's the same car as the Toyota, but it cost you more to say it's a Lexus. Or GMC over Checy trucks. Exact same thing but costs more with the GMC badges. I'm as much a tuner on my PC as I am on my car. I constantly am tweaking and overcloaking and swapping out parts. Alien/Dell makes that harder to do.

Now you just need to wire up a bunch of buttons and switches!

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So the extra $500 gets you a warrenty. All of my parts have warrenties. In fact my HD alone is warrentied to 2014, purchased in 2009. The warrenty you pay for is no better than the one that comes with the parts form the OEM. If you brake something you are SOL. The only company that warrenties you messing with stuff that I have come across is eVGA. As long as you do not overvolt, you are covered. I don't know. PC's are so easy to build I just can not find any justification to spend and extra $500-$1000 for a name on the case. You could put that money into other parts, like more water cooling or a bad ass monitor. Maybe even two.

According to Dice, the prone was removed because of the engine, not to stop dolphin divers. And to be honest, I really do not miss it. Ther are times It would be handy, but not a must have.

^^^^^ Air Warrior 3! I miss that game. I was in on the beta for it. They had some crazy stuff in the beta. I got in a dogfight with a Fokker triplane against a P-38. Also flew a MiG-15 against WW2 era aircraft. It was not realistic by any means but was interesting. All the crazy stuff was in the European theater. The Pacific was pure WW2.