Verdict: The first laptop with hardware PhysX and SLI graphics.
Dell was one of the first companies to produce a genuinely attractive gaming laptop, way back in mid-2005. While its desktop PCs are a little too standardised to excite hardware enthusiasts, Dell's massive buying power gives it a major advantage when developing innovative laptop designs. As the first and only laptop to offer Ageia PhysX, the XPS M1730 continues the tradition.
Like previous XPS laptops, the XPS M1730 is a monster. In fact, it has been fattened up, and now weighs in at 4.8kg. You'll definitely need the largest Pakuma bag you can lay your hands on to carry this lardy laptop. However, the styling has been more refined with each generation, and now the bling is far less in-your-face. Until you turn it on, at least, when the lighting on the keyboard and red glowing touchpad become obvious. We can see this being vaguely useful at a darkened LAN party, although the lighting does make the M1730 a touch garish. The keyboard has also become larger over the years, providing enough room for a full-sized numerical keypad and plenty of typing comfort.
The features that helped to make XPS laptops so good in the past remain, however. In particular, the M1730 still has a 17in screen with a 1,920 x 1,200 native resolution and Dell's TrueLife glossy coating for higher contrast and more vivid colours. There's also a webcam built in above the screen. The panel is driven by Nvidia GeForce 8700M GT graphics, which is essentially an overclocked version of the 8600M GT. The GeForce 8700M GT sports 32 stream processors running at 1.25GHz, with 256MB of GDDR3 memory running at 400MHz (800MHz effective). Although this GPU supports DirectX 10, it's a big step backwards from the DirectX 9 GeForce Go 7950 GTX found in other gaming laptops, so Dell has fitted two of them in SLI mode in the XPS M1730.
Processor options for the XPS M1730 extend all the way up to Intel's current flagship mobile part, the Core 2 Extreme X7900 running at 2.8GHz, although our review sample was fitted with the entry-level mobile Core 2 Duo T7500 running at 2.2GHz. This works alongside the Intel PM965 mobile chipset, and is backed by 2GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM. Plenty of storage is provided by a single 200GB Samsung hard disk, although RAID 0 and 1 options, up to 500GB, are also available. Blu-ray is another option for an extra £230, but our sample took the cheaper option of a standard Toshiba-Samsung dual-layer DVD writer.
The XPS M1730 has the usual array of ports for connecting external devices and removable storage drives. USB 2 ports are smattered along the edges, with one on the rear, two on the right, and another on the left. A DVI port and S-Video output are available for hooking up an external monitor or TV. Nearby, an SD, MMC, MemoryStick and xD card reader is available. There's a single ExpressCard/54 slot on the right, but no PC Card slot. The XPS M1730 even has a little L-shaped remote control that fits neatly inside the ExpressCard/54 slot, and charges when docked.
Performance
Although the Ageia hardware is this laptop's headline act, to compare it with other laptops, we ran our usual Media Benchmarks 2007 and current game test, Supreme Commander. The Dell's application performance was nothing to write home about, coming in nearly 8 per cent slower overall than the Rock Xtreme 770, which has the same processor and memory. The image editing test result was particularly tardy, lagging nearly 11 per cent behind the Rock.
The average frame of just 15fps - 40 per cent slower than the Rock - in Supreme Commander was also disappointing. You don't receive much benefit from SLI in many games, and a single GeForce 8700M GT is no match for a GeForce Go 7950 GTX. For a kinder comparison, we tried the heavily SLI-optimised F.E.A.R. at 1,920 x 1,200 with 2x AA and 4x AF, in which the XPS M1730 achieved an average of 51fps and minimum 26fps. Although several laptops offer 1,920 x 1,200 screens, few have enough 3D grunt to play games smoothly at this resolution. The XPS M1730 succeeds in this respect, however - at least with relatively undemanding games that make good use of SLI.
We also ran our gaming battery test to determine how long it would let us play Oblivion before the power gave out. The M1730 lasted 84 minutes. This is one of the longest-lasting gaming laptops we've seen. However, due to its weight, this laptop is aimed at being easy to carry to a LAN event rather than gaming while travelling.
Conclusion
We still aren't entirely convinced about how much extra benefit the inclusion of a PhysX accelerator in your laptop will offer, as so few games support the hardware. At least Dell's aggressive pricing means that you aren't paying through the nose for the privilege. Even so, the XPS M1730 costs roughly £60 more than the similarly specified Rock Xtreme 770, which includes an HD-DVD drive and is much faster in most games, despite having a single DirectX 9 GPU.
