New 1530; couple game questions

Hi all,

I've been lurking here for a bit as I've waited for my new XPS M1530 to arrive; note the complete specs in my sig. It ships on the 26th (ETA ~29th) so I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a good screen (Horror stories about the 1280x800 WXGA screen prompted me to modify my order to the 1440x900 WXGA+, which I understand has a lower chance of poor quality, if this is still an issue). My only other upgrade was from the T5850 to the T8100 processor, as I imagine the better FSB and cache far outweigh the 60 Mhz clockspeed loss. I paid $1,282.70 after tax, which seems like a good deal to me, though I'm certainly no expert.

I haven't had a new PC for some time, as I've been using the same 1Ghz Athalon tower for about 8 years until the hard drive decided to do me a favor and decide that life was no longer worth living the other week. As a semiserious gamer (mostly a part-time Civ IV junkie at the moment), I understand that I have a number of shiny new possibilities to destroy my GPA with.

High on my list right now are Spore, Supreme Commander (with Forged Alliance), Sins of a Solar Empire, and Bioshock (it may seem slightly out of place here as I'm mostly a strategy gamer, but the concept sounds super awesome). Problem is, I don't think I'll have enough time to play all of these games so I have some decisions to make. I was wondering if anyone has had experience with any of the aforementioned titles on similar systems and could weigh in on performance (SupCom is the only one I really question) and general fun value. I am especially interested in the relative merits of SupCom and Sins. I won't want to gouge my eyes out if I need to run on sub-native resolution, but I'm really not a big fan of happily chugging along into the mid-game and being hit with a mountainous pile of performance FAIL just when things begin to get interesting (this last happened to me playing GalCiv II. I know, I held on to my old compy for far too long).

Other thoughts would certainly be appreciated. Thanks!

 

I hope you used a coupon?

Bioshock is great. Supreme Commander is okay, not my fave though. I'm sure your new setup will run most new games nice, but with the native res of 1440x900 you may have to reduce to res to 1280x800 or something for some newer games.

I got mine with the 1280x800 screen, so we'll see if it's grainy at all.

 

I got a ~$500 instant rebate, which seems to be the same deal most coupon links give. Thanks for the post!

 

You should be fine on those games. I just played the Bioshock Demo on my XPS M1530 on all Max settings, Direct X 10, 1280 x 800 and it averaged 35 FPS, it never lagged at all during the whole demo.

 

I like what I am hearing! I will have to at the very least check out the Bioshock demo ASAP when my lappy arrives!