Dell XPS M1730: SLI, Penryn, and Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on February 28, 2008 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Benchmark Setup
The launch of the 8800M GTX allowed us to set several new records in mobile graphics performance in January. Armed with two GPUs in the fastest mobile Core 2 Duo to date, we expect to shatter every laptop performance record. We also have several new titles were adding to our benchmark suite, and we ran a selection of the benchmarks at the various overclock settings. Here's the system configuration we received for review.
| Dell XPS M1730 Test System | |
| Processor | Core 2 Extreme X9000 (2.8GHz 6MB L2 800FSB) |
| Memory Slots | 2 x 1GB DDR2-667 (Nanya NT1GT64U8HB0BN-3C) |
| Graphics | 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB |
| Display | 17" UltraSharp WUXGA (1920x1200) LG Philips LP171WU1 |
| Hard Drives | 2 x 200GB 7200RPM RAID 0 Hitachi HTS722020K9A300 16MB |
| Optical Drive | DVDR SuperMulti |
| Networking/Communications | Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet Intel 4965AGN WiFi |
| Audio | Sigmatel STAC9228X HD Audio |
| Extras | AGEIA PhysX 100M PPU |
| Operating System | Vista Home Premium 32-bit |
| . | |
One component that we wanted to talk about briefly is the LCD. We've complained in the past that laptop LCDs often offer significantly worse performance than just about any desktop LCD. They aren't as bright, they have poor viewing angles, nearly all of them use TN panels, and color accuracy even after calibration is relatively poor. Dell uses one of the newer 17" LCDs from LG Philips, the LP171WU1. This is the brightest notebook LCD we've tested to date, coming in at over 250 nits at maximum brightness. It has a glossy coating, but with Dell TrueLife - a technology that supposedly reduces reflection. We could definitely see reflections still, but perhaps they weren't quite as noticeable as on other glossy LCDs.
Besides having a brighter backlight, the LCD panel also boasts one of the best response times currently available in a notebook display. Many laptops still come with 25ms response times, but this new LG Philips display boasts 16ms TrTf/7ms GTG response times. For a gaming system, that can be a significant factor and we're glad to see Dell taking a holistic approach to the system. So far so good, right?
The only drawback is that the color accuracy is off the charts. Prior to calibration, we measured a Delta E of over 15.0, but even after calibrating the best Delta E we could achieve was still almost twice as high as the next closest laptop. We asked Dell about this, but we didn't get any real answer as to why the color accuracy was so poor. More likely than not, the display has been calibrated to be more subjectively pleasing at the cost of color accuracy - a case of Best Buy HDTVs meeting laptop LCDs. For gaming and watching movies in particular, there's a very good chance that many people will subjectively prefer the slightly oversaturated colors.
Honestly, most people probably won't notice the color inaccuracies, but they will definitely notice that the display is brighter and the response times are better than competing notebooks. For those that really need accurate colors, however, this particular panel seems to miss the mark. For gaming and movies, we had no complaints, and even doing photo editing it wasn't a serious problem. Placing the display next to a calibrated 30" desktop LCD, however, clearly showed the differences in color reproduction. Given that this is primarily a gaming notebook, we certainly don't consider the high Delta E to be a major concern, but we'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention the fact.
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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.