The folks at AnandTech have already
published a review of Dell’s XPS M1710 notebook. The machine came
out just yesterday, and packs one of NVIDIA’s brand new GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics processors
with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, along with a Core Duo T2600, 2GB of RAM, and
a 17″ 1920×1200 display. While the Go 7900 GTX’s specifications are only
slightly higher than those of the desktop GeForce 7900 GT, AnandTech decided to
compare the notebook to a full Athlon 64 X2 3800+ desktop system with a
7900 GTX 512MB. Surprisingly, the M1710 is often level with or faster
than the X2 system in Half-Life 2, Day of Defeat: Source, and
Battlefield 2. Of course, AnandTech did pit Intel’s fastest Core Duo
against AMD’s slowest X2, and games seem to tax the AMD machine’s
onboard sound more than the XPS’s. The X2 3800+
machine does nonetheless have the upper hand in Doom 3 and Far Cry,
although the XPS is practically as fast at the lowest test resolution of
1280×800 with 4xAA.
Along with its high performance, the XPS also manages to offer very
decent battery life. The machine lasted through two and a half hours of
DivX playback, and managed to hold up during a whole hour and a half of
looping 3DMark 2005. AnandTech points out that 3DMark is a bit more
taxing than real games, too, so this bodes well for on-the-road gaming
performance. All this showiness does come at a price, though: the XPS
M1710 adds up to $4,025 when rigged with the same hardware as the review
sample, and that’s with the standard 1-year warranty and Windows XP
Media Center Edition. Toss in the cheapest 3-year warranty and XP Pro,
and the price jumps up to $4,384. Not cheap, but then again it’s not
everyday you see a gaming laptop capable of keeping up with desktop
systems without getting awful battery life.
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