Pulled the trigger on an R2

Ok, I took the plunge on an M17x R2 on the outlet today. Here's the specs:

i7 620m, 320GB HD, 4Gb Ram, 2 x 4870, 1920 x 1200 RGB LED screen, Win7 of course.

Outlet selection really thinned out this weekend, unfortunately there were only a few on there with the high res screen - which from responses to a previous question I posted seems like a "gotta have" upgrade. For my purposes I'm fine with the 4870 instead of the 5870, and two of them are just gravy (if driver issues don't get in the way). The 620 is actually the processor I would have chosen if I spec'd out a new machine - my main interest (Flight Simulator) prefers clock speed over more cores so at the moment that's as fast as it gets in stock form. Was $1719, I hope this was a decent deal - seems to be as I'm roughly putting the processor/2nd vid card/screen upgrades at around $500 - $600 and it was still under the "base" starting price. Plus I will have another rebate from my employer after purchase that will bring it down another couple hundred. So I guess in the end around $1550 is pretty good?

I have to admit, I'm a little apprehensive with all of the issues I've read about with drivers, BIOS updates, stuff not working right out of the box, etc. If I don't have any problems with anything, I'm generally OK leaving the BIOS/drivers alone until there's an "official" update. But I don't want to start having issues right away on stock drivers, that would make this my first and last Alienware. I feel like I'm really rolling the dice a bit, looking forward to it but nervous.

 

I think you need not to worry about the possible issues.
With a non-extreme CPU and 4870's you're on the safe side...mostly

Great deal , BTW.
Welcome aboard.

 

Thanks. My current computer is a 6 year old Dell Dimension 8400 (also bought refurb from the outlet), Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz with 3Gb of 533 mhz DDR2 ram and an nVidia 7600GT 256 MB video card. It's served me well but it's past the point where it's limiting for things I want to run and how I want to use a computer. I'm sure I'll be blown away by the jump in performance. I'm just hoping some of my older games run without problems on the new hardware and OS. If I can run some of the stuff I've never been able to max out before with all the bells and whistles I'll be pretty happy. I know I still won't be able to max out FSX (it can still strain a powerful desktop) but it should be decent. This is my first foray into a desktop replacement laptop, I have high hopes.