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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Schadenfroh - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
We got a thread going in the notebook forums about it if you guys want to join us:http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid...">Text
Cullinaire - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
On the BF2 page:"(If you look at what should be a circular map in the top right corner of the screen while playing, you'll find that it's an eclipse, clearly showing that widescreen resolutions are running with the wrong field of view.)"
Did you mean ellipse? Just wondering. Nice article. I'll get one when I win the lottery, otherwise I don't go to enough LAN parties to justify one of these :)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Tired. Yes, ellipse. I must have misspoke originally.Poser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I assume this means you use speech recognition software for dictating your articles? Which do you use, and care to share any opinions about it? Even just a pointer to another forum posting would be great (and probably less distracting to this thread). I haven't ran across anyone who uses it on a regular basis for real work before.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
Funny you should mention that, because I was planning on doing an article on the subject shortly. Not to spoil the surprise, but I used Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 8. I toyed around with the speech recognition in Microsoft Office, and frankly it's pathetic by comparison. You can probably guess that I have carpal tunnel problems, which is what led me to Dragon NaturallySpeaking into first place. I've been using it for about six months now, and while it still isn't perfect, it actually works quite well overall. Probably the best $150 I spent in quite awhile.Regards,
Jarred Walton
Hardware Editor
AnandTech.com
nullpointerus - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
I used to get that intense, throbbing pain in my wrists after hours of typing. Then one Christmas I received a pair of typing gloves. They are tight (like spandex?) and have splints in them. At first I really hated them, but after using them for months I found that I no longer needed them.See, if you fight the material and the splints, you get a pain different from CTS but much more annoying and immediate, so your wrists are trained to assume the proper position when typing. Once I found that I didn't need the gloves anymore, I gave them to a friend who was suffering from the same problem.
These are the kind I used:
http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove.h...">http://www.imakproducts.com/products/smart_glove.h...
A solid, natural keyboard with keys that depress easily; proper chair with good back a nd neck support and good armrests; good posture; correct input device height relative to your body, etc. also helped. There's no point in training your wrists if your computing environment doesn't allow you to keep them in the proper position.
Then again, I don't know how badly you suffer from it or how much typing you have to do each day. Maybe someone else will find this post useful if you do not. :-)
JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 19, 2006 - link
I may have to give that a try - the wrist supports I have help, but they haven't solved the problem by any means.bob4432 - Thursday, April 20, 2006 - link
carpel tunnel is not the only neurological condition you need to worry about when doing a lot of keyboard work. you also have muscle overuse syndrome, different types of dystonia (chronic muscles spasms) etc, so if you can get dragon working decently, go that route. your entire upper body will thank you. i may have to try out dragon again, i tried it 3-4yrs ago, or whatever else speech software was out there and it was pretty weak then....gramboh - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
At 8.8lbs it's about the weight of a 17 inch Powerbook G4 so without seeing it I think it's portable. A MacBook 15 inch is 5.4lbs using the Core Duo CPU as well. I think this setup might be able to beat a MacBook in terms of performance which would be cool, because I like to see Apple lose at things, especially to Dell :). This is definetely a better gaming system than a MacBook with BootCamp running a measely X1600.timmiser - Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - link
I just bought an XPS M170 with the 7800 GTX Go and this looks like its pretty much exactly the same on the exterior. This replaced my Inspiron XPS notebook that had a 15.4" screen with the 3.2 GHz Prescott and Mobility Radeon 9800.With them both sitting on the table next to each other, the new XPS M170 is about a pound lighter and much thinner but amazingly with the bigger screen, the 17" XPS and the 15.4" XPS are the exact same height because the 17" XPS is much thinner it all equals out. They are also the same length (front to back) but the M170 is a couple inches wider. I am amazed that the overall size with the bigger screen isn't all that much bigger.