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Gadgets Dell XPS M1730 Specs, Images Leaked
Brandon Hill (Blog) - August 6, 2007 2:02 PM
Print 22 comment(s) - last by shadowofthesun.. on Aug 7 at 6:32 PM

  (Source: Notebook Italia)
Notebook Italia gets the scoop on Dell's latest gaming notebook

When it comes to unreleased notebooks, the folks over at Notebook Italia are kings of getting the information out to the public. Today, the site has the scoop on Dell's new XPS M1730 gaming notebook.

The XPS M1730 will take the place of the XPS M1710 and as its name implies will feature a 17" screen. The notebook will have a wide range of Core 2 Duo processor options and will also offer the 2.6GHz Core 2 Extreme X7800. As is the case with most notebooks introduced these days, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory is supported. Dell will also offer Intel Turbo Memory in 512MB or 1GB varieties

The base machine will feature a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS graphics processor, while forking over more dough will get you a GeForce 8700M. Other niceties include Intel PRO/Wireless 4965AGN network card, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and the option of a Blu-ray optical drive.

According to Notebook Italia, the XPS M1730 will officially launch on August 27.

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It's about time......
By Devo2007 on 8/6/2007 2:24:28 PM , Rating: 3
I see they finally added a separate numeric keypad -- took them long enough. :)

I do question how good the mobile 8700 is though -- hopefully it's noticeably better than the 7950 cards used in the M1710 (just adding DX10 without noticeable improvements in current games doesn't count).




RE: It's about time......
By therealnickdanger on 8/6/2007 2:36:39 PM , Rating: 2
It won't perform nearly as well as the 7950... totally different class of card. The 8700 will likely perform on the same level as a desktop 8600GT, but likely not as good as the desktop 8600GTS, certainly no where near the 8800. The 7950 can't be outdone by the sub-8800 series on the desktop side, so the only benefits of the 8700 will be improved power-stepping and H.264 decoding. Expect abyssmal DX10 performance.

I miss my E1705 (aka 1710), it was a great laptop, er, desktop replacement (DTR). I think I'll wait for DDR3 to take hold, combo HD/BR drives, OLED, and SSD before getting another large laptop... so two years?


RE: It's about time......
By nerdtalker on 8/6/07, Rating: 0
RE: It's about time......
By shadowofthesun on 8/6/2007 11:50:33 PM , Rating: 2
Of course, 3D Mark scores are the most reliable way to compare laptops of different generations, with different generation video cards...

Even assuming that 3D Mark is a reliable source, in-house testing performed on two identical laptops, one with a 7950 and another with a 8700 report that the 8700 loses, sometimes considerably... See http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=1...

Also, if we assume the 8700 is as fast as the 8600GTS (which it is not), the Go 7950GTX (equivalent to the 7950GT) will still beat it. Tom's hardware guide indicates huge margins between the 8600GTS (desktop) and 7950GT (desktop); In BF2142, at 16x12 with 4x AA and 8x AF, the 7950 slides in at 40% faster than the 8600 GTS... PREY, at the same settings, reports a 45% performance gap.

The 8700GT is NOT meant to take the place of the 7950. nVidia would like it to, but the performance just isn't there. The 8700GT performs around a 7800GTX or 7900 GS. It is meant to serve as a sort of upper-mid range card, much like nVidia provided the 7600GT, which had 12 shaders over the 7600's 8.


RE: It's about time......
By otispunkmeyer on 8/7/2007 4:31:39 AM , Rating: 2
listen to this man.

the current 8600GT Mobile card is roughly on par with the 8600GS desktop part, its speeds are roughly the same, memory is slower i think (8600GT Mobile is 475 core, 1000 shader core, 700 mem). the 8700 mobile part has much higher clock speeds (625 on the core for example), i think higher than the desktop 8600GTS but i think its likely the 8700 will be equivalent to the 8600GTS.

the 8600's do fine an dandy in 3dmark...they put in a good showing, besting previous gen cards like the 7900's.

but when it comes to actually playing games the tables are turned somewhat, especially for games that make heavy use of textures. the 7900's wider memory bus and greater number of ROPs/texture units see to it that the 8600 gets put in its place.

the 8600/8700 cards are pretty weak imo, but they do come into their own with shader heavy games, of which there arent that many.


RE: It's about time......
By shadowofthesun on 8/7/2007 6:29:20 PM , Rating: 2
After reading your message 3 times, I'm still not sure if you are agreeing or disagreeing with me. I said that realistically, 3D mark scores aren't that great for comparing two different machines, especially laptops that generally don't allow for 2 different graphics cards under the same configuration (the Clevo I linked being the exception). My examples were real world games, and my conclusion was that the 7950 was faster.

PS. 8600M GT < 8600 GT in terms of clocks (there is no 8600 GS on the desktop) and 8600 GT < 8700M GT < 8600 GTS.


RE: It's about time......
By shadowofthesun on 8/7/2007 6:30:05 PM , Rating: 2
Oh, now I understand. You misinterpreted my first line. That was meant to be sarcastic.


RE: It's about time......
By Samus on 8/7/2007 1:50:23 AM , Rating: 2
PWNd.


By therealnickdanger on 8/7/2007 8:20:53 AM , Rating: 2
Ha.


RE: It's about time......
By shadowofthesun on 8/7/2007 6:32:28 PM , Rating: 2
Pwnd? Far from it. That link provided was based on pre-release speculation and nVidia's sythetic benchmarking on a pair of mystery laptops. Not the most reliable source.


RE: It's about time......
By Gul Westfale on 8/6/2007 2:36:45 PM , Rating: 2
does anyone else think that whenever there is a "leak" of info it's usually directly from the manufacturer, in order to increase pre-release buzz?


RE: It's about time......
By The Sword 88 on 8/6/2007 4:19:48 PM , Rating: 3
Yes


RE: It's about time......
By Xerio on 8/6/2007 4:56:05 PM , Rating: 2
Nicely put. Sometimes I wish everyone's reply was so brief. ;)


Lack of power vs Go 7950GTX?
By 996GT2 on 8/6/2007 2:44:46 PM , Rating: 2
According to Techreport, the 8700M GT GPU has 32 stream processors, a 625MHz core clock speed an 1600MHz memory clock, and a 128-bit memory bus. Compare this with that of the 7950GT Mobile GPU, which has a 575 MHZ core clock, 1400MHz memory clock, and a 256-bit memory bus. Seems pretty similar...but looking at the # of stream processors on the 8700, we can see that it's not really meant to be a top-end mobile GPU:

The top-end 8 series desktop cards have many more stream procesors...the GTX has 128 and the GTS has 96, which are quadruple and triple that of the 8700M. This leads me to think that the 8700 is simply an overclocked version of the 8600 series of mobile GPUs. Definitely not something to compete with the Go 7950GTX.

Maybe nVidia will release something down the road (maybe a Go 8800 chip) with more stream processors to really fill the top-end market segment in gaming laptops.




By poisondeathray on 8/6/2007 3:16:23 PM , Rating: 4
According to notebookcheck.net

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-8700M-...

Geforce 8700M GT ------3DMark2006 3431
Geforce GO 7950GTX ---3DMark2006 5214

Not very good :(

I would also like to know if eSATA is supported


Look of the thing
By bigpaw on 8/6/2007 4:56:05 PM , Rating: 2
Anyone else think this thing looks crappy? Maybe it's just the picture angle, but wow, this thing looks bad (as in, not good).

Please someone say it's kinda like when they hide cars from the press and put crazy black materials on them to cover up sections to make them look bad.




RE: Look of the thing
By thenumberoneundesirable on 8/6/2007 9:44:19 PM , Rating: 2
it's not just you this thing is fugly. i think they should've kept with the old design with mult-colored lcds.


RE: Look of the thing
By otispunkmeyer on 8/7/2007 4:55:01 AM , Rating: 2
yeah whats with the wierd el cheapo plastic marble effect. how naff is that?


Argh
By zsouthboy on 8/6/2007 4:38:02 PM , Rating: 2
Why the crappy video card?

This won't beat my m170 (7800gtx) :( (hell, if I could add a dual core proc to this thing, it'd be perfect)

Other than that, it addresses one of my complaints about the m170 - lack of numpad (though for most people, I'm sure they don't care).




RE: Argh
By kondor999 on 8/7/2007 12:56:58 AM , Rating: 2
I agree. I've got an Inspiron 9300 which I upgraded to a 7800GTX Go (flashed it with the XPS gen2 BIOS, new power brick, etc) and I just don't see a reason to upgrade.

It's amazing to me that it's been 2.5 years since I bought this notebook, but there is not a significantly faster mobile graphics solution out there.

OK, maybe it's not amazing - more like disappointing...


What!?
By leidegre on 8/6/2007 2:53:16 PM , Rating: 2
Is it just me, or does it look like the laptop has some major depth, in comparsion to other laptops.

I do like the keyboard layout, except for the keypad position.




By Hokum on 8/7/2007 4:43:30 AM , Rating: 2
Good grief, its horrible. It looks like they tried to go "urban camo" and then decided to give it a keyboard the colour of a commodore amiga.

I think it would of looked better in lime green than this!




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