As I mentioned in the review of the rather awkwardly named Rock X770 T7800-8800, there are always going to be people that don't see the point of the gaming notebook. In that instance the Rock was the perfect tonic, thanks largely to the GeForce 8800M GTX - the first DX10 mobile solution worth the name. However, today I'm looking at a notebook that would doubtless confirm to those sceptics that they were right all along.
On paper, at least, the Dell XPS M1730 ought to be a great gaming machine. As standard it comes equipped with two 256MB GeForce 8700M GTs running in SLI as well as the "World's First" mobile Ageia PhysX chip, which is intended to provide independent physics acceleration for gaming. It has a 17in, 1,920 x 1,200 display, is available in a variety of colours and a bit like a Christmas tree, or the front of a house (depending on your locale), it's adorned with various bits of colourful lighting. So, what's the problem?Well, to set the ball rolling it doesn't help that various quarters have hyped the machine to a level that's completely unwarranted. Claims such as the ability to play a game like Crysis at "full resolution" and "with ease" aren't so much ridiculous, but laugh out loud hilarious when you consider that even far more powerful desktop systems struggle. Throw in a few arbitrary numbers from 3DMark06 and it's a recipe for a lot of misleading headlines, which does nobody any good at all.
If you have all the money in this world, you can perhaps buy Dell XPS M1730. For a hefty price tag, Dell has genuinely filled this model to the top with fabulous features.
Starting with the Dual SLI graphics, NVIDIA's exclusive system for multi-GPU solutions resulting in faster rendering of graphics, with this machine you are able to take any of the latest games by their horns. The strong gaming score that Dell XPS M1730 battery has achieved, on Quake and F.E.A.R for example, as verified by majority of the online review websites, speaks for itself.
Gaming experience is also enhanced with a built-in 10-key pad allowing you to use your normal in-game configuration. Dell has also taken the first step to integrate Logitech's GamePanel LCD in a notebook. It's positioned just above the keyboard and presents essential information for the gamer.
The LCD screen it comes with is meant for games. It's a 17" UltraSharp Widescreen UXGA offering lower refresh rates for less ghosting, and bright vivid colors with a high resolution. If you take this laptop to LAN parties, it certainly will stand out amongst the other computers with its backlit keyboard.
The screen itself offers a high-definition 1920x1200 resolution and the speakers are phenomenal, though a little more bass would be nice. Despite all of the features we have seen in this machine that weren't expected, there are a few features we did expect that aren't included. For instance, a lot of powerful notebooks like the HP Pavilion HDX9003TX and the ASUS G2S have HDMI ports included, and we've even seen a trend towards e-SATA ports in the latest releases. It seems a shame to not include these in such a powerful unit.
As well as some media controls, the XPS M1730 has Dell MediaDirect, a media centre-type software, which can be run prior to launching the operating system. The main advantage is the ability to watch movies, listen to music or view photos within a few seconds of hitting the MediaDirect button, rather than having to wait for Windows to load.
Naturally in the benchmarks we saw good scores, particularly in the gaming tests. In WorldBench 6 the Dell XPS M1730 scored 85, a very nice score, though not quite as good as Dell's own XPS M1330 notebook. In 3DMark 2006 it scored a very powerful 8033, more than enough to run most current games to run with medium to high quality settings. 3DMark 2001 SE got blitzed by a score of 27,792.
In the encoding test it also did well, achieving scores that are beginning to show notebook CPUs are comparable to desktop CPUs. Using iTunes to encode 53 minutes worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files took just 75 seconds and in Cdex (which uses only one core of the CPU) it took 110 seconds.
Battery test results weren't all that impressive. In our DVD rundown test, where we loop a DVD until the xps m1730 battery drains, the XPS M1730 lasted only 69 minutes. However, it's clear this desktop replacement is not designed for long term battery use, so it isn't a huge flaw.
