Dell XPS M1730 First Look Review

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by Kevin O'Brien

The Dell XPS M1730 is the latest high-end gaming notebook from Dell, replacing the aging M1710. Dell has improved both the outside appearance of this gaming rig and the components inside its glossy shell. One item added to this notebook, a first for any notebook, is the AGEIA PhysX Processing Unit. Packed inside you also get dual 256MB NVIDIA 8700M GTs running in SLI alongside the Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor making this notebook a force to be reckoned with.

This Dell XPS M1730 has the following configuration:

• System: Dell XPS M1730 (Smoke Color)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 (2.8 GHz)
• Memory: 2GB @ 667MHz - 2 DIMM Slots (2 x 1GB) (Max Ram 4GB)
• Hard Drive: 2x200GB 7200 RPM running RAID 0
• Graphics Card: Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8700M GT with 512MB total memory
• Physics Card: AGEIA PhysX 100M
• Screen: 17&quot; WUXGA Truelife (1920 x 1200)
• Optical Drive: 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW/+R) with Dual-Layer
• OS: Windows Vista Home Premium
• Wireless Card: Intel 4965 (802.11b/g/n)
• Battery: 9-cell lithium ion recharegable battery
• Ports / Slots: 5-in-1 Memory Card Reader, DVI-D, S-Video, IEEE 1394 (Firewire), 4 USB 2.0, Express Card slot, Modem, Ethernet/LAN, Microphone in, 2 Headphone out
• Price of this configuration: $4,499 (base model starts at $2,999)

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Build and Design

From the moment you slide the notebook out of the box, you realize just how massive this notebook is. Clocking in at over 10lbs for the notebook alone (add on almost 3lbs for the ac adapter), you realize this is more of a portable desktop in terms of weight and gaming power. The body is extremely well built, on par with many rugged business notebooks, in some cases could probably destroy the business notebook in a fight.

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The display cover is a mix between a glossy painted plastic finish, and a semi-transparent plastic shell that LED's illuminate to show off the Dell &quot;XPS&quot; logo. The materials used are fairly scratch resistant, and should hold up well with minimal scuffs over time. For a gaming rig the design is pretty tame, and not too flashy, but with the lights going full blaze it will stand out in a classroom. The color for our review model was the &quot;Smoke Grey&quot; design, but Bone White, Crimson Red, and Sapphire Blue are also available.

Screen

The Dell WUXGA screen included on the M1730 is gorgeous. Colors are rich and vibrant, and the backlight is fairly powerful. Black levels are very deep, and backlight bleed is minimal. Unless you are extremely picky you would consider the screen to be perfect. Viewing angles while not perfect are much better than average, meaning colors stay fairly accurate at steeper vertical viewing angles.
Another screen exclusive to the M1730 is the inclusion of a LCD gaming screen, similar to those found on many gaming keyboards. This provides information such as processor and ram usage, media controls, stop watch, timers, and other capabilities.

Below is a video highlighting some of the features of this notebook and it gives you a look at the quality of the screen.

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Speakers

The speakers on the XPS M1730 are exceptional, and what you would expect from a gaming rig. Volume levels are more than adequate for intense gaming, and frequencies from all but the lower range come through clearly. Although no subwoofer was present on this model, bass reproduction seemed to be within the same range as models equipped with them.

Gaming and Performance

So what exactly did you buy a 10lb notebook for anyways? I am betting it was for the insane performance that can usually only be seen with much larger desktop gaming setups. Since this is a first look we won't go too in depth on its performance, but will give you a few hints.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Dell XPS M1730 (Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 @ 2.8GHz)	29.345s
Dell Vostro 1500 (Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 @ 1.6GHz)	53.827s
HP Pavilion dv6500z (AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	40.759s
Systemax Assault Ruggedized (Core 2 Duo T7200 @2.0GHz)	41.982s
Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @2.2GHz)	37.299s
HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	40.965s
Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz)	76.240s
Zepto 6024W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	42.385s
Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.705s
Alienware M5750 (Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz)	38.327s
Hewlett Packard DV6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	38.720s
Samsung Q70 (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz)	42.218s
Acer Travelmate 8204WLMi (Core Duo T2500 @ 2.0GHz)	42.947s
Samsung X60plus (Core 2 Duo T7200 @ 2.0GHz)	44.922s
Zepto Znote 6224W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz)	45.788s
Samsung Q35 (Core 2 Duo T5600 @ 1.83GHz)	46.274s

PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Dell XPS M1730 (2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme X7900, Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8700M GT 512MB)	7,006 PCMarks (7,953 PCMarks overclocked to 3.4GHz)
Dell Vostro 1500 (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	3,585 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,925 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,377 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,591 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks
Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400)	3,646 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results:

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Dell XPS M1730 (2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme X7900, Dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8700M GT 512MB)	8,369 3DMarks
Dell Vostro 1500 (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	1,269 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU)	1,069 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, ATI X1700 256MB)	1,831 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks
Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3DMarks

 

HDTune results:

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Heat and Noise

For a gaming notebook the XPS M1730 is incredibly tame in terms of heat and noise output. Fan noise is less than my Lenovo T60, although the M1730 is pushing more air. Heat output is higher from its vents, but it is also twice the size and 8x as powerful. Keyboard and palmrest temperatures were very low, barely above room temperature even after the notebook had been on for a while. For a notebook that you might spend hours in front of, this was pleasantly surprising.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The XPS M1730 sports a full-size keyboard with 10-key number pad. Key spacing is just about perfect, and key action is excellent. Support beneath the keyboard is good, although some flex can be felt when you press firmly onto the sides of the keyboard.

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The touchpad on the XPS M1730 is very nice, with quick and accurate finger tracking. Dell touchpads I have found to be finicky in the past with lag, and this had none of it. Another element to this touchpad is the white XPS logo is illuminated from behind, allowing you to set it to a rainbow of colors.

A full array of media controls are also present on this notebook, located on the front edge of the notebook. They were far enough out of the way that you wouldn't accidentally hit them by accident, but they were also close enough to easily access.

Input and Output Ports:

Front: Infrared Port and media controls. (view large image)

Left Side: DVI, Svideo, USB, Firewire, 5-in-1 Card Reader, Fixed Optical bay, microphone and 2 headphone jacks. (view large image)

Right Side: Expresscard/54, Wireless On/Off, Wifi Catcher button, 2 USB, and Kensington lock slot. (view large image)

Rear: Power Input, USB, and LAN. (view large image)

Battery and Power

Battery life is not one of the key shopping points on many gaming notebooks. Fully charged, when unplugged from the wall the XPS M1730 reported 1 hour and 27 minutes of battery life remaining sitting idle on the desktop. In this type of setting it acts more like a UPS, protecting against power outages or brownouts.

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The power adapter is equally as amusing for a portable device, being as large as some ultra portable notebooks themselves. This of course is needed to feed the power demands that a notebook with dual video cards, dual hard drives, and a super fast processor require.

Software and Operating System

Not unlike many of the standard consumer Dell notebooks, you still get a ton of added junk fresh out of the box. From antivirus software to various toolbars, you can figure at least 15 to 20 minutes just uninstalling it all to get a clean gaming platform. With all the unneeded bloatware removed, the included Vista Home Premium operating system really speeds up. My only surprise was our review system had Home Premium, and not Ultimate.

Editor's Note: Stay tuned to NotebookReview.com for the full review of the Dell XPS M1730, coming soon!

 

That thing is so thick! But powerful, for sure.

Thanks for the First Look, Kevin!

 

Guess it came in..Great first peak!!! Im partial to the lighting myself... Can it all be turned off or does it require a separate power source in itself? lol

 

Looks and performs amazing! I don't think I would be able to deal with those blinking lights, though. Hopefully like the XPS desktops you can turn them off in the BIOS.

 

I have only one thing to say: D901C. I find this one overrated, though I like it overall. I don't find that it's really worth it's money.

 

My god that thing is big. And it still looks horrible IMO. Nice first look, kevin.

And coole easter egg.

 

It's...huge for what it offers (which is less than a D901C), but with looks...I like the way it looks, but don't like it's dimensions & weight. Have already I ruined this thread?

 

Hm... for the price and hardware I think that I'd rather have a decked out Alienware M9750 seeing as it the 7950 GTX is still the best card on the market.

 

I'm not a fan of the location of the pg up/dwn/home/end buttons, but there is no question about its power Thanks for the first look!

 

I still think it's extremely ugly, but that's from a cosmetic/style point of view. There's too much black and not enough accents and lines. The specs barely make up for that. The keyboard is also gorgeous and I looooove the back lit keys. I could do without the blinking although sometimes it's quite fun. I don't like the direction they're heading in with the top-tier XPS notebook in that it's becoming more Alienware-like in the coloring and design.

I wonder if Dell has truly improved their screens since my purchasing experience? I've just never been happy with my screen as it just doesn't seem to have the energy and richness of some Sony, Toshiba, and Fujitsu screens I saw this price point no matter how many settings changes are made.

I look forward to the full review.

 

So I take it that it doesn't have HDMI?

 

I'm actually starting to like the styling of the M1730, especially with regards to how the lights were done.

Those benchmarks--wow.

Lol @ the AC Adaptor. Just how watts is that thing rated at?! It reminds me of the XBOX 360's power adaptor.

I'd still prefer an HP Compaq 8710w, however. Although the Dell is more powerful, the HP is much more practical (thinner, lighter weight, better battery life, no bloatware, etc.), and still packs quite a punch. Plus, if I were in a business environment, I'm sure I'd get yelled at for having a bunch of lights on my notebook .

 

I don't think I have ever seen the power brick almost as big as an ultraportable. wow.

 

It is a monster! A desktop on wheels... Wonder if pple would rather wait till GeForce 8800 shows up in its belly?

 

Get real...D901C is better & it's at around the same weight. That's a desktop on wheels.

 

looks like a huge hunk of plastic! the design is disappointing, much uglier IMO than the 1710. but of course, i'm not a huge fan of the giant alienware eyes either, so...

would've looked a lot better if some higher end magnesium or carbon fiber was used instead of that injection molded stuff. but i'm curious to see the review. will you be able to bench it with and without the aegis physics card?

 

Agreed. That's a little too gaudy for my taste - though I suppose I wouldn't be the target market for the XPS.

Nice to see the Eee make a guest appearance, running a shiny new OS ... And the size of the Eee vs the XPS power brick was good for a chuckle as well!

 

The funny part is...people like it because its so ugly. Its 'Ugly on Purpose'. If you check the owners thread, you will see they are on backorder.

 

Looking at it's power adapter:

---THE HELL?!?!?

 

I think it's a 230Watt adapter. Isn't it?

 

I think it has the same power supply a M9750 would require, considering it has almost the same specs (except the CPU & lights).

 

I have to say, Dell really impressed me with how the M1730 turned out. At first I hated the styling, but now I can't seem to get enough of it. It's still not as good looking as the Gen2/M170, but it's miles ahead of the M1710 (I never did like the black/red on silver look)

 

Wow, gets about the same battery life as my 4 year old Inspiron 9100, and its battery is in perfect condition. Why has battery life not grown for large laptops?

 

curious to know which screen they are putting in it? model number please?

i have mixed feelings about the looks of this. i def think i would like it better in all black instead of the "smoke" color and what i sup with the white or grey keyboard they def SHOULD HAVE USED BLACK!!! that ruins it for me once you open it

 

Why ppl flattering it so much, as FADE TO BLACK said, that thing is power but not as powerful as the D901C. Beside, Dell overprices it, with that money I can get the D901C for more power and something else...

 

Clevo D901C FTW!!!

The Dell is overpriced for what you get. The Clevo is still king of all notebooks with a 280-300watt power supply.... which shows why its the most powerful.

And with the money that you save by getting a Clevo D901C, you can get a kick-ass custom paint job (if ordered through XoticPC.com)

 

ok I got the base model for 2,50 usd .I priced the sager and don"t think I would have gotten the specs I got fot that price .

 

AHAAA, do I see Windows XP on that Asus Eee ???

 

that answer is easy 15.4 inch screen vs 17, 2 hard drives, physix card, SLI.

 

Dell abuses its home customers, but it's actually pretty competitive if you buy through a discount program with a school or employer. The discounts there can actually make a difference depending on what you're in the market for.

 

Yeah, but it's still not really better than the Sager...What discount can give you $1000 off ????

 

Had this thing launched with the 8800 GT/GTX mobile cards (whenever they come out) I imagine the performance difference would have been drastic, pushing this well above the competition. As it stands, it's just expensive solely for the sake of being expensive. I believe Dell pushed this into production earlier than planned to get the "reputation" of the laptop into the marketplace. I think they're waiting for the release of hardware that this DTR can truly utilize, but as it stands it's an expensive beast with a mid-range graphics solution.

I had a 8700 GT in my "old" X205-9359, and it did not impress. I hate to bring out negative vibes as a tribesman of the Dellienware camp, but this laptop is like buying a fully maxed out computer... with just a pair of Geforce 8800 GTS 320's. It doesn't matter if you have the $1,000 processor if your graphics cards doesn't match the horsepower.

 

poor screen and i suspect terrible keyboard flex like the dell m1720 so these two are deal-breakers for me, especially for something that costs over $3k dollars.

 

If you're talking about the M1730 I don't see where you are getting that from. I'm typing to you from the M1730; the keyboard flex is minimal and the screen is magnificent.

 

You ruined your new Asus, why?

 

i based it off of reading this preview on page one and from seeing the m1720 in action at a dell store. i noticed that it's keyboard had terrible flex and the m1730 seems to have the same exact keyboard. and dell is known for screens with light leakage. if the screen is not as good as sager's 17" wsxga in terms of light leakage and viewing angles then i would consider it sub-par for a $3k+ dollar laptop.