Dell XPS M1710 - GeForce Go 7900 GTX 512 Mobile Gaming, Part 1
by Jarred Walton on April 18, 2006 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Closing Thoughts
As far as portable gaming goes, the XPS M1710 is currently one of the best options available -- certainly the best I've ever used. SLI gaming laptops are on the horizon, but as our benchmarks show there are quite a few titles that don't really need multiple graphics cards to be perfectly playable. In fact, personally I think multiple GPUs in desktops is already getting a bit carried away, and while I don't generally want a thin and light notebook, anything larger than the XPS M1710 starts to get into the "luggable" category as opposed to being a truly mobile computer. A single fast graphics chip at present seems the best way to balance performance against heat and power requirements.
As for how the XPS M1710 compares with other laptops, we don't have anything in-house faster right now, but there will almost certainly be competitors in the near future. For now, this is an extremely powerful mobile gaming platform, and it deserves serious consideration if you're in the market for such a system. The system also looks great, and the 17" LCD feels huge -- you generally sit with the laptop very close to your face, so a 17" laptop display feels about the same as my 24" desktop display. This is by no means a complete review, and we will have a follow-up article looking at some specific details, but our first impression is definitely favorable.
Would we recommend you go out and purchase such a laptop? Yes, provided you're willing to spend the money. If you're looking to save money, you almost certainly won't be able to afford a laptop this fast and powerful. If you want maximum battery life, there are better options out there as well. You can probably even find faster laptops if you're willing to spend more money and go with a larger, heavier system. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are many ways to build a laptop, and no one design will be right for every person out there. The Dell XPS M1710 manages to strike a good balance between cost, performance, and size, though obviously at the higher end of the spectrum in all three categories.
Compared to the two desktop systems, it manages to hold its own, and the Pentium D 920 in particular often struggles to keep up. The end result is that you're basically looking at a $1000 "mobility tax" if you want to have all of the performance of a desktop system in a mobile platform. The laptop even manages to handle running nearly every current game at the LCD panel's native 1920x1200 resolution (FEAR being one of the few exceptions).
We will have a second article looking at the finer details of the XPS M1710 and the GeForce Go 7900 within a couple weeks, including a closer look at the internals and construction as well as a few attempts to further increase performance. The good news is that so far we haven't encountered any serious problems -- in fact, the only problems during testing can basically be attributed to user error. If you have any comments or questions in the meantime, send them my way.
As far as portable gaming goes, the XPS M1710 is currently one of the best options available -- certainly the best I've ever used. SLI gaming laptops are on the horizon, but as our benchmarks show there are quite a few titles that don't really need multiple graphics cards to be perfectly playable. In fact, personally I think multiple GPUs in desktops is already getting a bit carried away, and while I don't generally want a thin and light notebook, anything larger than the XPS M1710 starts to get into the "luggable" category as opposed to being a truly mobile computer. A single fast graphics chip at present seems the best way to balance performance against heat and power requirements.
As for how the XPS M1710 compares with other laptops, we don't have anything in-house faster right now, but there will almost certainly be competitors in the near future. For now, this is an extremely powerful mobile gaming platform, and it deserves serious consideration if you're in the market for such a system. The system also looks great, and the 17" LCD feels huge -- you generally sit with the laptop very close to your face, so a 17" laptop display feels about the same as my 24" desktop display. This is by no means a complete review, and we will have a follow-up article looking at some specific details, but our first impression is definitely favorable.
Would we recommend you go out and purchase such a laptop? Yes, provided you're willing to spend the money. If you're looking to save money, you almost certainly won't be able to afford a laptop this fast and powerful. If you want maximum battery life, there are better options out there as well. You can probably even find faster laptops if you're willing to spend more money and go with a larger, heavier system. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are many ways to build a laptop, and no one design will be right for every person out there. The Dell XPS M1710 manages to strike a good balance between cost, performance, and size, though obviously at the higher end of the spectrum in all three categories.
Compared to the two desktop systems, it manages to hold its own, and the Pentium D 920 in particular often struggles to keep up. The end result is that you're basically looking at a $1000 "mobility tax" if you want to have all of the performance of a desktop system in a mobile platform. The laptop even manages to handle running nearly every current game at the LCD panel's native 1920x1200 resolution (FEAR being one of the few exceptions).
We will have a second article looking at the finer details of the XPS M1710 and the GeForce Go 7900 within a couple weeks, including a closer look at the internals and construction as well as a few attempts to further increase performance. The good news is that so far we haven't encountered any serious problems -- in fact, the only problems during testing can basically be attributed to user error. If you have any comments or questions in the meantime, send them my way.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I personally hate laptop keyboards -- I don't care too much about the gaming aspects, but for more regular typing the cramped space doesn't help me out at all. At least the key positioning is decent, with the home/insert/delete/and/page up/page down keys all having the same arrangement as most desktop keyboards. I wish they would move the Fn key to the top left -- not just on this laptop, but on all laptops. I'm also in complete agreement about the usefulness of a number keypad, and certainly on a laptop of this size, they have ample room to add one.Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I thought about that, and I figured there just wasn't room underneath the keyboard to enable a full size keyboard? And there are two air intacts on either side of the keyboard as well.They DO however provide a FN key activated "numpad" over the 789, UIO, JKL and other keys as a sort of compensation, although I found it faster to use the basic number keys in place of it.
Odeen - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I've taken a few laptops apart, and the underside of the keyboard module is always FLAT, save for standoffs. You don't need any room under the keyboard. Unless there's something useful around the keyboard, it can be expanded to the sides.The FN-activated numpad is of little consolation, because all laptops have that feature, even the ones that cost 1/5 that this one costs.
Incidentally.. how the heck do you test a modern desktop system with a Geforce GTX Go, exactly? Take the laptop apart, pry out the PCI-E card and VGA connector, and stick it into a desktop motherboard?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
The clock speeds of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX are 500/600 MHz for the core/RAM. I downclocked the desktop graphics card to the same clock speeds, and that's about as close as we can come to doing a direct comparison between the two. It's somewhat interesting to note that there are a few GPU Ltd. benchmarks were the laptop actually comes out ahead by a small margin.3zero2 - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
any comments about fan noise? is it noticable/annoying?Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
This machine is still identical in chasis to the XPS notebook I picked up late last year, so I'd assume the fans are still the same. On mine they can only be barely heard if you load up a game and play for a bit, but if you play with headphones on you won't hear them anyway.I had a question on the battery life though! How long would this laptop last with just simple internet browsing or Word doc typing, or something similarly light? In performance terms my own notebook wouldn't even make it within the ballpark so I'm curious! Does the Core Duo processor allow you to reach .700 volts at 800mhz as with a Pentium M, for egging out another half hour of battery life for when it's needed?
IntelUser2000 - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
No, the lowest for Core Duo's are really 1GHz. All the Pentium M generations can reach as low as 6x multiplier so:
Penitium M Banias: 100x6=600MHz
Pentium M Dothan: 133x6=800MHz
Core Duo: 166x6=1GHz
I heard that Intel put a lock on the Core Duo's so you can't lower it from the default lowest, just like AMD did with C&Q on the later revisions.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I'll look at some other areas of battery life in part 2. Needless to say, charging up the battery and then letting it sit 2+ hours at a time doesn't help much with deadlines. LOL I will try to tune the system for better battery life as well. I think the minimum clock speed of the T2600 is 1.0 GHz, but I will need to verify that.Kougar - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
lol! I am very sure it doesn't! I'm certainly in no rush, and I figured part 2 might expand upon the battery tests... I just wanted to provide some extra Qs to answer for it! So maybe I'll toss in another... ;) Does the GPU TDP fit within the previous GO 6800 Ultra/Go 7800 GTX envelope limits? Replacing my 6800 Ultra for a 7900GS and getting better battery life in the process has a certain appeal! Suppose I can keep my desktop 9600XT around just a bit longer instead...And btw, should have said so above! Thanks for the very interesting article on this "notebook"! I appreciate it :) And that tidbit on the Core Duo too!
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Audible but not terribly loud. Will have details in part 2.