Better Alienware Aurora graphics card.

When Dell/Alienware offers the gtx 480 cards is a whole different matter.  Very likely there will be high demand right after release in the gaming community making supply scarce and they are having issues right now meeting demand.

yeah, i was begining to think that to.  are the dual cards (5970, gtx 295) that hard to manage?  iv never used Cross fire or SLI.  is it really that much better for all games?

Just saw this in techpowerup forums.  Just a piece excerpted here at the top...

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=117000

Dual cards are no problem to manage at all.

Depending on the actual game you will get a typical boost of around 50-70% from dual compared to a single card and sometime a little more.

Of course there really is nothing out there at the moment that needs more than a single 5870 except on the largest monitors. However going for a dual card solution you have a little more wriggle room for the future.

I also wouldnt get your hopes up of getting an AW with a new Nvidia 470 or 480 for a while yet. Though they are nominally released on the 26 Mar it is likely to be at Least May before there are any significant numbers hitting the market.

....and who knows what the price will be of the Fermi cards.  I ordered my rig (arriving tomorrow) with an upgraded power supply......it's coming with the 5870 and I'll be able to sli it in the future if needed.  I wonder though what two will do noise-wise and heat but it's still an option.

how do you upgrade your power supply, i cant find it anywhere on the customize checklist

I didn't want to make a point of it but I ordered elsewhere.  Still like to give input here thought till my rig arrives.

Velocity Micro.  Ordered it March 1 (week ago Monday), they finished the build in five days (Friday).  Shipped it Monday, will receive it today (Friday).  Total turnaround was just 12 days.  Their timeline projection when I ordered was met exactly. Prices are very comparable with Alienware. I hope Dell/Alienware turns things around because I was a happy customer in the past but things were not meant to be this time around.

Velocity Micro.  Ordered it March 1 (week ago Monday), they finished the build in five days (Friday).  Shipped it Monday, will receive it today (Friday).  Total turnaround was just 12 days.  Their timeline projection when I ordered was met exactly. Prices are very comparable with Alienware. I hope Dell/Alienware turns things around because I was a happy customer in the past but things were not meant to be this time around.

Really?  I priced out VM and found it to be quite a bit more expensive ... 10-15%.

Free shipping+$60 'snow in event' (probably changed to something different depending on time of year), and saved $20 on no keyboard or mouse.  Think that's probably close to $200.  Also, I live in TX so I get sales taxed by Dell but not VM....I'm not sure which states gets taxed by Dell but maybe it's only TX.  I found Falcon NW to be more expensive 'cause they hit you with shipping (IIRC, around $120) and they had no promos.  In any case, for me, it was close to a wash.  YMMV.

Got the new rig fired up....one of my concerns was that the 5870 would be too loud....well I played about 20 minutes of Borderlands and the card was virtually silent.  Didn't notice a thing while gaming.  I'll put it through some more real world gaming tests in the next few days but now I'm spending alot of time reinstalling basic apps, steam, et. al.

Awesome! Congratulations! Does anyone know if the bridge needs to be removed to disable CrossFireX and get access to the other video ports?  Or can you just disable it in Catalyst software and be done with it?  Also, the other ports have plastic guards on them, I'm guessing they can just be popped off?

Installed a GPU monitor gadget on my desktop.....after about an hour's worth of Borderlands (settings maxed, 1920X1200 screen) the GPU temp was 68C [edited from 54C cause I noticed higher temps later...no change in fan] and fan speed 2200 rpms.  That's right after exiting the game.  At 2200 rpms you hear practically nothing.....it idles near 1200.  As you can see there is alot of open space in this rig....nice window on the side to see just about everything. Pic taken by my Droid. :-)

What video card is that?