We won't blame you if a Dell laptop isn't the first product to spring to mind when it comes to performance hardware. However, before you decide not to bother reading this review, it's probably worth explicitly stating that this laptop isn't designed for playing Minesweeper on the train while eating a Marks and Spencer pasta salad.
The Dell XPS M1710 is a large slab of silver gaming laptop, crammed with cutting-edge and expensive components, including a 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo T2600 CPU, an Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics card, 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 100GB 7,200rpm Seagate hard drive.
As if to reassure you that this is an exciting product, the Dell sports a plethora of backlit XPS logos and LEDs shining through air vents. You can even customise the colour of the in-built LEDs - our favourite colour is aquamarine, which we think goes well with the silver chassis.
Gimmicks and in-your-face branding aside, the really eye-catching feature of this laptop is its 17in 1,920 x 1,200 widescreen TFT, which can display crisp 1080p video. Although the screen is quite reflective, due to its glossy finish, it offers gorgeous, vibrant colour and pin-sharp clarity. Considering that this is a gaming laptop, though, it's surprising that, unlike Rock with its Xtreme CTX, Dell doesn't offer the option of a lower-resolution panel, as it's asking a lot of a graphics card to provide playable frame rates at this screen's native setting.
Thankfully, the GeForce Go 7900 GTX is no pussycat. Replete with 512MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 600MHz (1.2GHz effective) and a 500MHz GPU, its specs are similar to those of its fully-fledged desktop sibling. The speeds are only slightly lower than the 650MHz core and 800MHz (1.6GHz effective) memory of the desktop card.
As desktop replacement laptops continue to grow in popularity, it seems that they're also becoming more sophisticated. At 4.85kg (including the power brick), the Dell is less titanic than other high-end laptops, such as the Alienware Aurora m7700. The most refreshing aspect of the Dell, though, is that as long as it's located on a desk with unobstructed ventilation, it's tranquil in 2D apps, and even remains acceptably quiet when you're raiding tombs in deepest Bolivia with Lara Croft.
The Dell is very well constructed. The keyboard, while lacking a number pad, feels sturdy and is comfortable to use, and the trackpad is precise and responsive - with a backlit logo built in lest you forget you're using an XPS. This isn't the first high-end laptop to make an excellent first impression with us though. Rock's Xtreme laptops have been fighting off newcomers on our Elite list for several months, and the latest Rock Xtreme CTX walked off with a CPC Premium Grade award two months ago.
The only disappointment with the Dell in terms of its hardware spec is its lack of a digital S/PDIF output for its on-board HD audio, especially as the tinny on-board speakers, and what Dell cheekily calls a subwoofer, do their best, as usual, to ruin music and films. However, a decent audio output is the only conspicuous absence; the Dell has six USB ports, DVI and D-SUB outputs, an S-Video TV out, a modem, 10/100 and 802.11b/g Wireless LAN, as well as FireWire, Bluetooth and a memory card reader. The optical drive is a speedy Sony 4x dual-layer DVD writer.
PERFORMANCE
As the Dell has the same Core Duo T2600 CPU as the Rock Xtreme CTX, we predicted that it would return similar benchmark results. It was far quieter though. The Dell managed an excellent score of 1.30 in the Paint Shop Pro test. In the multithreaded DVD encoding benchmark, the Dell scored 1.08. This is nearly 10 per cent quicker than the 2.8GHz Pentium D-based reference PC - a testament to the efficiency, clock-for-clock, of Core Duo compared with Intel's old NetBurst chips.
In the multitasking challenge, the Rock Xtreme CTX managed a very good score of 1.24, but the Dell blew it away with 1.55, which suggests that the Dell benefits significantly from its extra gigabyte of RAM. Many desktop PCs would struggle to achieve a better overall score than 1.31.
A £2,000 laptop should also provide a great gaming experience. Expecting a single GPU to play the latest games at 1,920 x 1,200 is optimistic. However, the 7900 GTX just about manages to pull it off. The heavy use of complex shader effects in F.E.A.R. has given most graphics cards nightmares since its release, and the GeForce Go 7900 GTX is no exception. As soon as AA was applied at 1,920 x 1,200, the frame rate fell to a juddery 23fps in some sections. However, at such a high resolution, it's debatable whether you'll see any benefit from AA, and without it, F.E.A.R. still looks stunning, and the frame rate didn't drop below 30fps.
At maximum detail, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a gorgeous combination of hazy landscapes and hectic cop chases. With low AA and low AF, the Dell managed an average of 40fps and a minimum of 27fps at the luxurious native resolution of the display, which is a great achievement.
Quake was child's play for the Dell. At 1,920 x 1,200 with 2x AA and 8x AF, the average frame rate was 56fps, which is almost ludicrous for a laptop, especially as the minimum frame rate didn't drop below 33fps.
CONCLUSION
Aside from the slightly over-eager XPS branding and lack of an S/PDIF out with which to connect decent digital speakers, the Dell XPS M1710 is an excellent laptop. The performance provided by the GeForce Go 7900 GTX and the Core Duo CPU make it the most powerful laptop we've reviewed, and remarkably, it isn't ridiculously heavy, uncomfortably hot or too noisy.
As with all gaming laptops, though, the lack of comprehensive upgradability and the premium you pay simply because it's a laptop make the Dell a very expensive proposition.
The killer for Dell is that you can pick up a similarly equipped Rock Xtreme CTX, with the same CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 256MB version of the GeForce Go 7900 GTX for £300 less (at the time of writing). We're not convinced that the extra memory on the Dell's graphics card is worth £300, and Rock also offers the option of a lower-resolution screen if you don't care about HD video. The Dell is great, but its price tag is too high, so, for the time being, the Rock Xtreme CTX offers much better value for money.
Author: Chris Lee
Dell XPS M1710