Hey Russ, on i7 with GTX555; your are going full out with it.

Here you can find a great review, enjoy :) HardwareHeaven

Cheers Frank!!

Thanks bills889!! Was it easy to install the 7850? 50-60fps must be smooth to play!!

I love my x51 but to be honest for the price the gtx 555 isnt very powerful. On battlefield 3's "high" graphics preset at 1080 it was pulling 35-40 fps on average.

The i7 is great but for gaming the i5 pulls the same results. The i7 only pulls aware with a heap of multi tasking. Maybe games in the future will benefit more from the i7....

I wasnt happy with the gtx 555 so i installed an amd 7850. Now im pulling 50-60 fps in bf3 with the same settings :)

Im happy with my gtx 555. It can play all the games available.

Im used to having a walmart computer that couldnt play any current games at all. So to me it blows my mind.

You have to also consider that if you ugrade you wont get Nvidia optimus which can save some $dough on your electric bill.

Yes it was just plug and play no problems. Yes it's allot smoother now :)

Very helpful - thanks guys!! I'm going to order the X51as I've just got a 10% voucher from Dell :)

I have been reading all kinds of reviews on how the X51 with specs identical to mine can play Battlefield 3 at high settings and average 40-50 fps, and I have to tell ya. Complete and utter BS. I am extremely disappointed due to the fact that I barely get 12 fps after about 3 minutes of gameplay on low settings, with the resolution turned down to 1280x768.  I am very serious about my Battlefield and I'm pissed that I spent $800 that I could barely afford, on a PC that is marketed for gamers on a budget, and it does NOT deliver on what is advertised. Maybe I didn't choose the optimal specifications for what I use it for, I don't know. I'm not as knowledgeable about hardware as I used to be.

What specs are your x51?  If it's not performing optimally let's see what the issue is?

I'm a big battlefield fan too, stay at 1080 but lower a lot of settings keeping shadow and mesh high and turn off all the antialiasing stuff off, motion blur off, anisotropic filter low or off too. Vertical sync goes without saying to be off as well... you should find yourself getting a steady over 40 fps but more importantly a very smooth playing experience.

I updated my graphics card to a GTX670 yet find too much detail at ultra to play well and still drop to these settings for a smooth game, i get over 100fps now though at these settings :)