When people came up with the suggestion of making the computer portable, the general idea was to make the system smaller so that it can be carried around. It’s funny to see how opposite things are now, as we’ve gone from small to smaller, and now back to big again. We still have our fair share of small notebooks, but the number of behemoth laptops is increasing as of late, gaming and multimedia notebooks in particular. One such example is Dell’s XPS M1730.
Now you’ve seen the HP HDX Dragon and how enormous it was. Thankfully, the XPS M1730 isn’t as big. That’s not to say that it won’t give you a backache, as it weighs 4.81kg and measures at 40.6cm x 30.3cm x 5.1cm (WxDxH). Being big also means that the exterior is sturdy and can withstand some impact. The XPS M1730 is covered by a glossy finish which has a rather reflective surface. Colour wise, the scheme is a simple black and grey, which isn’t the most stylish of choices. But what should catch the most attention are the LED panels. The LED panels emit a blue glow (our review unit came with blue LED panels) which looks great at night or in a darkly lit room. In addition to the LED panels, the trackpad and front speakers also come with their own LED lighting. Fortunately, these can be customised in the BIOS. The keypad also illuminates by simply pressing the function key and the right arrow. Together with the LED panels, the XPS M1730 lights up like a Christmas tree.
There are some nifty features that are noticeable on the notebook, such as the GamePanel by Logitech. You will be able to see your CPU and memory usage, use a countdown timer, and check the time and date (this is almost similar to the LCD panel found on the Logitech G15 keyboard). Besides that, a set of multimedia buttons are found on the front panel in between the two speakers for easier access. The display is a whopping 17” LCD screen. Now, 17” isn’t the largest we’ve seen around, but the XPS M1730 has a native resolution of 1,920×1,200, which is perfect for playing those high-definition movies. However, we found it weird that the laptop didn’t come with a HDMI port or a D-sub port seeing as Dell offers consumers the option to get a Blu-Ray drive. So considering that it was meant to play HD movies, not having a HDMI port is a let down.
Dual GeForce 8700M GT SLI cards power the high resolution with core clock speeds comparable to even the desktop 8 series. However, that fact doesn’t translate well to overall performance as our tests with Crysis showed that running on dual SLI mode performed slower than single GPU mode. By right, this shouldn’t be the case. The problem with this is due to the fact that the driver updates are entirely up to the vendor, that being Dell in this case; on Dell’s site, the version of the driver is 156.61 whereas the latest drivers on NVIDIA are already 163.75. This in no way means that it is a bad card. On contrary, the XPS M1730 scored 7,533 on 3DMark06 with AA and AF set to 4x and 8x respectively at 1,280×800. Another highlight that Dell pointed out is that the XPS M1730 is the first notebook to offer an integrated AGEIA PhysX chip. Although a lot of hype has been made about it, there aren’t many games that are specifically programmed to utilise the AGEIA PhysX chip, so upgrading that option may be unnecessary.
As for the specs, the XPS M1730 runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 at a clock speed of 2.4GHz, 2GB of DDR2-667 RAM, and a pair of 160GB hard disk that operates at 7,200rpm. You actually have the options of upgrading to a Core 2 Extreme X7900 and 4GB of memory, but the price for those two in particular are through the roof. In addition, Dell has included the option of upgrading your storage to solid state disks, which makes use of memory chips, like SDRAMs. This greatly reduces latency and other delays in standard hard disks.
With the specs out of the way, we present you the scores. The XPS M1730 came out second in the CPU test and the memory test, scoring an amazing 5,931 and 4,730 respectively. Graphic wise, it scored a pretty good figure of 4,767 though it lost to the ATI HD 2600 solutions on Fujitsu’s N6460 and HP’s HDX Dragon. Lastly, the HDD test revealed a score of 4,104, resulting with a PCMark score of 4,769.
Our verdict? It’s one badass machine for sure, though the lack of driver support greatly brings down the overall value. And it being a gaming machine means that its number one factor IS its graphics. A lot has been said that it can replace desktop computers. Unless Dell improves its driver support, we don’t really see that happening anytime soon.
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