That's pretty much the same pc I have too. I don't understand the slams against Dell. This is my 2nd one. Maybe you guys are talking about the low end ones because on this one and my last one I had 0 problems. They run just like my Honda Accord. Perfect.
Now that FX5200 that I bought from Dell is not as good as I thought it would be. I get about 100 FPS with smoke off and clouds off. But the FPS varies with what you have in the background so it's hard for people to just say "I get this many FPS and I get that many FPS". Park your plane with the same exact background and same features turned on and maybe that's a better gauge between PC's.
ORIGINAL: aviti
I run a Dell and although I am aware that it is not a computer guy's dream, it does that job for me and pretty darn well. I of course take no offense to the Dell comments as you guys know what you want and build it exactly that way.
My only reason for posting is to help guys who might wanna get a Dell...
Mine is a 4600 (so it doesnt have the integrated graphics card). It is a P4 2.8 Gig 512 Ram. It has a Geforce fx5200 128 card which I am told is not so great but it runs AFPD great except when I run smoke. Good enough for me! I get about 70 FPS on the photo real scenes while the 3D scenes are about 40-50 FPS.
Also, I looked at my setting screen and it says I have my card in a 8X AGP slot so it sounds like I could easily upgrade to the recommended Radeon 9800 down the road.
I thought is was a pretty good deal at $800....including 17 inch monitor and speakers, dvd and cdrw drives too...plus free shipping.