Dell XPS M1730: SLI, Penryn, and Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on February 28, 2008 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Closing Thoughts
The Dell XPS M1730 is fast... really fast! It's definitely the fastest notebook we've ever tested, and outside of a few specialty notebooks that use desktop CPUs, there's really no way to make anything faster right now. It's also expensive. Sure, Dell could have stopped in a couple of 64GB solid-state drives to try to further improve performance, but with prices already starting at $4000 for 8800M SLI, and with the amount of storage modern games require, we would just as soon not spend $2000 on smaller SSDs that may not always improve performance. If you feel differently, you can of course go that route.
Now, let's take a step back and actually consider what you're buying with the M1730. The 8800M GTX offers similar performance to the desktop 8800 GT 512MB. It has slightly slower clock speeds on the core and slower memory, but it still delivers good performance - great performance in a notebook. The X9000 is also very fast for a mobile CPU, clocked at 2.8GHz. That puts it roughly on par with the E6750, once we take into account the slower bus and memory speeds of notebooks. If you purchase the M1730 as tested, then you get roughly the equivalent of a desktop system with an E6750 and 8800 GT SLI. So we're talking about a ten pound notebook that can match the performance of a top-end system from a year ago. That's pretty incredible when you get right down to it! Okay, so that's now more of a midrange desktop system that can be put together for around $1500, but that's the price of miniaturization.
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If you absolutely need transportable gaming performance, the M1730 is a great solution. If what you really want is great gaming performance when you can sit down and plug in, and you might also like to have long battery life for when you're on the road, there are other options. You can obviously save yourself a lot of money by buying a desktop for gaming and a notebook for mobility and ditching the whole concept of the gaming road warrior. Even if you still want to stay with a gaming notebook, you don't necessarily need to go as extreme as the M1730. Single GPU laptops offer very good performance, particularly if you're willing to turn down the details in a few spots. Do you really need 4xAA at 1920x1200, or could you be content with 0xAA at 1440x900? We'll have a couple more reviews in the coming weeks that look specifically at two offerings that meet these criteria. You won't get as many bragging rights, but then you could take the money and buy jewelry for your girlfriend instead....
That's all looking at the question from the perspective of a reasonable, cost-conscious buyer. Many of us fall into that category, so it can be difficult to imagine someone wanting to buy an extreme notebook like to XPS M1730. Such individuals probably also scratch their heads at the exotic sports cars of the world. The fact of the matter is that some people want to go out and buy a Ferrari, Lamborghini, or some other "insane" sports car. They don't want to purchase a mass-produced car that costs 1/10 as much and still delivers most of the performance thrills... they want a freaking Lamborghini! With laser beams on its head! If you feel the need for speed, Dell has got your fix right here. (And just in time for tax returns….)
As exciting and powerful as the XPS M1730 is, like the MacBook Air, we can't say everyone needs something like this. Do many of us lust after this sort of performance though? You bet we do! This is a system for people who want maximum performance in a transportable computer -- most of the time you'll still be tethered to a power outlet. It would be nice if we could get the potential for this performance when we need it, but still have the option to shut down various devices so that we can save power when we're away from our desks. That's what Hybrid SLI aims to accomplish, and we are certainly interested to see how that pans out.
The bottom line is that the XPS M1730 is currently the ultimate desktop replacement gaming notebook. You could easily forget about having a large desktop computer and simply do all of your gaming (or work should the need arise) on an M1730. It's not hard to imagine using it as a transportable workstation as well. Get a 30" LCD, keyboard, and mouse for your home and your office and you can now take your entire system with you wherever you go. Software developers -- especially those who work in the gaming industry -- could benefit from having something they can use to demonstrate their latest graphics tour de force. Many probably still feel this type of system is excessive, but it definitely satisfies a niche market. After all, there's nothing wrong with a bit of excess now and then.
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hyperealism - Monday, May 19, 2008 - link
Are there any stats available showing how much power is saved by using the single video card compared to the SLI? I am buying one and I want to know if its worth getting the SLI version. It would be nice if you could disable one in the bios.Thanks in advance!
Tye
xantha - Monday, March 17, 2008 - link
Just in case there are any Aussie readers that aren't aware but a gaming notebook can be more affordable than you think.You can get the XPS 1730 nicely specced for around AU$4300 (includes bluray, tv tuner, dual 8800, T9300, 4G) If you have the ability to salary sacrifice then that $4k+ starts dropping - lots :D
First you don't pay GST so its now AU$3900. Then its taken out in pre-tax dollars so depending on what you are earning thats another 30-40% off. Making the XPS only AU$2340-$2730 effective cost. And its like 12mth interest free cause the payments are spaced out over the FBT year.
Thanks Mr Taxman for a half price gaming notebook every year :D
docjon - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
I'm just curious, With the new drivers is there still a large performance difference between Vista and XP?JarredWalton - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
The short summary is that I found no reason to even want to run XP on this system. It works great as is. Time constraints do not permit me to test every option, unfortunately.As you can imagine, given the number of tests run, all of the testing was done with the system as shipped (after uninstalling any Internet Security Suite of course - PUKE!) It is possible to order certain models of the M1730 with XP, but at this point I see little reason to buy a DX10 SLI setup only to run XP. I believe that the focus on driver optimizations for 8800M SLI has been primarily on Vista as well.
I'm sure there are instances where XP is still slightly faster (and likewise others where Vista is faster), but the last time we took a close look at XP and Vista graphics performance those situations were very rare and generally not a serious concern. I mean, if we're talking about 30 FPS vs. 40 FPS that would be a serious issue, but when it's 180 vs. 190 I'm not too worried.
Scottyboy99 - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Am a bit gutted reading the article. I have dell xps m1730 (Core 2 duo 2.4 ghz, 8800m gtx sli & 4 gig ram - Vista Home Premium) & my 3d mark 06 are nowhere near the scores shown. I have 3d mark 06 basic demo version (I can only run half the tests & stuck at resolution 1280*1024) and my single gpu score is 8700 whilst my sli enabled score is 10750 ish. So I am 2000 points at least shy of the systems tested here. My drivers are dell stock 167.55. I did try out 174.16 from laptop2go & my scores went down by a few hundred so went back to 167.55.What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
JarredWalton - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Well, outside of overclocking, at stock speeds with the official 176.55 drivers I got 12859. My guess is that you might have a bunch of other software still installed that is affecting performance. I clean out all the stuff I don't want (i.e. McAfee Internet Security Suite or whatever it's called - Norton/Symantec is just as bad - and various other programs; I shut of Dell QuickSet as well as most other system tray icons/utilities), so that might be the problem you're having.The CPU score is going to be a factor, of course. I tested with Penryn 2.8GHz and got the following:
2.8GHz 3DMark06 Scores:
3DMarks: 12859.000000000
SM2.0 Score: 5971.000000000
SM3.0 Score: 6559.000000000
CPU Score: 2554.000000000
Bumping up the CPU speed to 3.2GHz (the same 400MHz gap that your system has relative to the test system) yielded:
3.2GHz 3DMark06 Scores:
3DMarks: 13920.000000000
SM2.0 Score: 6337.000000000
SM3.0 Score: 6969.000000000
CPU Score: 2893.000000000
So that's ~1000 points right there, and potentially I have a 6MB cache chip vs. your 4MB chip (T7700?). That could account for another ~1000 points or so. Also, the 174.20 drivers dropped Futuremark performance, but they dramatically improve gaming performance.
Scottyboy99 - Tuesday, March 4, 2008 - link
Ok thanks mate. Yes mine is T7700 cpu. You are probably right in that I should shut a whole bunch of stuff off. I do have the McAfee security suite running so maybe I should re-bench without that on (if I can work out how to close it down without disabling it at start up!!!). Based on what you have said I lose 1000 based on my cpu & the cache might be almost another 1000 so perhaps my score isn't so bad after all. Having said that I expect I should be able to eek some more performance out of my rig and maybe go past 11,000 marks. Will post if I get any joy.Thanks again
flatron85 - Saturday, March 1, 2008 - link
**** - **** - **** - **** - ****the last B could be an 8 the rest is readable.
mark3450 - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
In Feburary 2005 Dell released the "Dell XPS/Inspiron Gen 2", which was the equivilant of the one machine reviewed here at the time. I own one.The last video driver update for this machine was November 2005. That means that Dell continued to the video drivers for this machine for LESS THAN ONE YEAR after it's release.
I have attempted to update to various unofficial drivers without success (machine boots and runs but then crashes after a few minuites of use), and have been forced to return to the Dell blessed ones.
Overall it's a nice piece of hardware, but the lack of driver support that was given too it makes me leery of buying the M1730.
JarredWalton - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
Would these by chance help?http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_notebook_167.51...">http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_notebook_167.51...
I don't see any Vista drivers for those notebooks, unfortunately, but maybe I'm just not putting in the correct search criteria.