Introduction
The interior of Dell XPS M1730 is found in a protective foam and a second black box contains the bundle. In this box we have a large transformer sector, a range of leather CD which contains: the leaflet, pages range of CDs, Creative headphones and a remote that can fit into the Express Card port. In terms of CD, we have: the Vista Restore CD, Roxio burning software Media Direct, webcam software, drivers, Works 8.5 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2.It is a beautiful machine to look very aggressive and inspired, all the game lover . It measures 39.4 x 28.0 x 5.1 cm and weighs 5 kg, a reasonable weight for a PC 17 which includes the Top of the technology.The top cover of the Dell is really design. The graphics looks like fish scales or snake skin, with two lateral holes. At the center we find the Dell logo that is surrounded by these 2 "holes" gray, covered with Plexiglas. 2 XPS logos are affixed to each of these gills. The quality is very good, but the painting seems fragile despite a correct opening. On the front we find the latch for opening the slab, and multimedia keys. Treated titanium is present on these keys, it agrees perfectly with the color black and gray of the whole. On each side of the navigation keys, the HP is located behind a black grille.
On the side of the XPS, we find an Express Card port, a switch to enable /disable WiFi, a button to search for available WiFi, 2 USB 2.0 port and a Kensington Lock.
At the rear, we have the grids for air extraction fans, a USB 2.0, Ethernet port and plug to connect the XPS to the sector.Finally left, there is a DVI port, one S-Video, USB 2.0, mini Firewire, card reader 5 in 1, a microphone, 2 helmets taken, and the DVD.At first glance, nothing is missing, it is fairly well supplied. It notes against the lack of an HDMI port, which would have been more appreciable.
Below we will find first a shell of magnesium and aluminum, which allows better heat dissipation and a weight gain. It is painted matte black, and reinforces the impression of solidity of the beast. There are a total of 3 doors. The first cache of the 9-cell battery, which includes a charge indicator. The second cache 2 strips of 667 MHz DDR2 Hynix brand 5.5.5.12. The last hiding places for hard disks, which are two. The first is occupied by a hard disk Samsung 250 GB 8 MB cache, the SATA and it rotates at 5400 rpm. You will also notice the presence of a new XPS logo and the air vents that allow the aspiration of air by fans. Fans who are 3: one for the T7500 and the other two for Geforce 8700 M GT.Specification of Dell XPS M1730
1. Operating System
* Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate
* Genuine Windows Vista Business
* Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
* Genuine Windows XP Professional
* Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate with Downgrade Rights Service to Windows XP Professional
* Genuine Windows Vista Business with Downgrade Rights Service to Windows XP Professional
2. Memory
* Up to 4GB Dual Channel 667MHz DDR2
3. Graphics
* NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT graphics
* NVIDIA SLITM Dual GeForce 8700M GT with 512MB2 GDDR3 Memory
* NVIDIA SLITM Dual GeForce 8800M GTX with 1GB2 GDDR3 Memory
* NVIDIA SLI Technology
4. Screen
* 17" UltraSharp Wide Screen WUXGA (1920x1200) display with TrueLife
5. Sound
* Standard:
5.1 channel output with for true surround sound experience with no external decoder required.2 speakers with 2 18mm transducers per speaker enclosure providing 10 watt output power.Premium Digital Array microphones for enhanced voice and communication applications.
* Optional:
Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD sound processing software for enhanced gaming,music, and movie experiences.
6. I/O Ports
* 4 USB 2.0
* Dual-link DVI-I (support for 30-inch displays)
* HDMI via DVI adapter
* VGA via DVI dongle
* Firewire (IEEE 1394a)
* RJ45 Ethernet port (10/100/1000)
* S-video with component, composite, S/PDIF support through dongle
* 8-in-1 card reader
* ExpressCard 54 mm slot
* Consumer IR
* Dual headphones, microphone (stereo line-in) and support for 5.1 audio out
Inside of Dell XPS M1730
The opening of the screen is done with a latch, which is placed just above the multimedia keys. These buttons allow the setting of sound, increasing and decreasing it, to play / pause / stop / forward and backward. They are lit in blue in handling. Back to catch.This slab is Wide format and has a Bright its resolution is 1920 x 1200, or the Full HD. It delivers color and beauty contrast.
In the middle of the screen, there is a webcam with a microphone. Then came the launch of IE, Power On, the blue LCD screen and buttons of management, the standard keyboard with number pad and touchpad.On the screen we find the same care as the rest of the laptop, with the flaking paint, and a keyboard light gray metallic.
Now turn to the keyboard,we have 2 hot keys, the first to launch the web browser, and the second to turn on the computer. Between these 2 keys, we have blue LEDs, which indicate, locking capital and stopping the slide. On the right, an LCD screen is present, it measures 6 x 1.7 cm. It is blue with white writing. Three functions are available, the clock, the burden from the PC to the CPU and RAM, and a stopwatch. It manages these functions through the 5 buttons that are on this screen.
Below we have a keyboard. It measures 36.5 cm x 12.5 cm. It has 102 keys. The impactor is very pleasant. One of the best keyboards we've tested so far. It is flexible and responsive. The key feature allows a combination of: put the computer on standby to see the level of battery power, to stop the run, switch to DVI mode, adjust the brightness (8 levels of intensity, the first too dark, and the latter perfect for a full day), and activate the backlight of the keyboard.
The touchpad, however, measure 7.3 x 3.6 cm. It offers amazing glide and is very pleasant to use. It is equipped with a vertical lift and horizontal, to acilitate navigation through the windows. The 2 button clicks are just as pleasant to use and it also comes with 5 activities on the right side that indicate: Power On, HDD activity, liaison to the sector, Wifi and Bluetooth.
First Test of Dell XPS M1730
For testing, we used PC Mark 2005, PC Mark Vantage, 3d Mark 2005 and 2006. To see what this laptop was really in the belly at the CG, we have compared to the powerful Alienware 9750, which uses a T7600, 2 GB DDR2, 2 7950 GTX in SLI, and a system to Raid 0 for 2 hard disks of 160 GB 7200 trs.
* PC Mark 2005
In this first test, the Dell XPS with a lot to do, because the 9750 offers a robust configuration. The overall score was in favor of Alienware, something which is quite logical, because it has a more powerful CPU and a good storage system faster, thanks to Raid 0 disks and 7200 TRS . By against, at the memory, we see that the platform 965 is above the 945, memory equivalent. For GPU, the Dell passes a short head. It is true that the 7950 cards are very powerful, while the 8700M GT is the equivalent of 8600 GTS PC with 32 Stream processors. Especially the Direct X10 compatibility is interesting. A final word on the hard disk, which is far from Raid 0, but which offers a very good score, because the average of 5400 rpm is 3673 pts on PC Mark 2005. It has a good health. It is unfortunate that this model does not include the Turbo Memory to improve performance. The next high-end versions, will be equipped according to our sources.
* 3D MARK 2006
Under this bench, too, the overall score is for 9750, but only a few exceptions. Its processor is faster, it passes. At the level of detailed scores SM3 and SM2, the gap is narrowing, once for 8700, once for 7950. The 8700 are therefore superior in terms of power compared to 7950, despite their generation in advance. They are not slow, far from it, but it is true that we expected better. However, this must be balanced, because the face of current cards that are found as the 8600M GT or HD2600 XT, the 8700 GT SLI proposes to double or even triple the performance in SM3 and SM2. The 8600 is 1224 and 1185 and the HD2600 XT in 1338 and 1727. It was not until the 8800 M provided very soon to have a CG in a really powerful Laptop.
* PC Mark Vantage
Sub PC Mark Vantage scores are not in favor of Dell as he proposes a more powerful. We really do not see how a single HD2600 XT can be over a 8700 GT in SLI. Especially this point which is confusing because the other results are all very close and it is true that only the graphic really differs between these 2 machines. For against, we see once again that the Samsung hard drive is really powerful for a 5400 rpm, as it significantly surpasses the 160 GB of HDX.
Subsequent test for Dell XPS M1730Now to some games in Direct X10, including:
* Call Of Duty 4, 1920 x 1200 AA 0x AF 0x, Details High (extreme being available).
* Unreal 3, 1920 x 1200 AA 0x AF 0x, details to 3 (max 6).
* Call Of Juarez, 1920 x 1200 AA 0x AF 0x, maximum details.
* Crysis, 1024 x 768 AA 0x AF 0x, medium details.
Even if the advertised FPS you do not enormous, we are in 1920 x 1200, a resolution . Crysis is only 1024 x 768, because of an inability to change the resolution, due to a bug in Touchpad and mouse, we have failed to resolve. It was therefore impossible to change the resolution.
As you can see, this M1730 is doing fairly well at high resolutions. Call Of duty 4, besides being beautiful, is playable, as the frame rate drops are relatively few. However, when the stage becomes too complex, slow feel. On average it is completely playable, and just as pretty. For Unreal 3, the conclusion is the same. The game is beautiful, very fast, but some cuts are present. It still runs mostly above the 30 fps per second. In this game you do not really feel that graphics cards have difficulty to display the image because it is still very fluid and fast. Call Of Juarez, the scores are close to the 2 other games. Again, it is playable, but there are very sharp slowdown from time to time, with 2 frames per second. The image is then frozen for a second, and again on 30 FPS. In complex scenes, the FPS are a little yoyo. It will therefore be less dependent on the details. Finally, for Crysis, even in 1024 x 768, can not display a frame rate suitable. It oscillates between phase playable and unplayable. But again we nuançons this, because it seems that the demo does not support SLI, which is disabling. Electronic Arts has announced that the final version of the game supports SLI and the performance will increase.
As you can see, the 1730 is still capable of strong performance, and is more compatible with Direct X10. With 1920 x 1200, with details of how it is possible to play in good conditions and exploit the slab at its peak. Moreover, this slab agrees very well work in less high resolutions, with a surprising record. With 1680 x 1050 image remains clear and quality, scaling down the gene does not. Even the bench of Crysis in 1024 x 768 delivered a quality image. This slab is truly breathtaking.Even the most powerful weapons can not leave a single burn mark on the walls thinner and every opponent you eliminate collapses always the same predictable way. The gamers have games that pleasant but it lacks the realistic touches which would allow the player to immerse themselves completely in the bath of the game so far, only the physical software was integrated into the games. This means that the calculations related to physics are managed by the Central Unit versatile and general torment the already difficult task of meeting the ever increasing demands of games to the advanced technology of today, including the logic and AI "(source AGEIA PhysX).
By going against it that all games do not support this card, but for example, Unreal 3, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter II may benefit from this card. On this link, you will find the list of compatible games. It is therefore an undeniable plus for 1730, although this is far from being exploited at present.
Conclusion
What Machine. We were blown by the XPS. Its design is pleasant and aggressive, and his finishing is excellent. His slab 1920 x 1200 produces a quality image, and above all, it supports non-native resolutions, which is quite rare. Keyboard typing offers a fresh and accurate, and its touchpad is effective. From a performance is the "bomb" just works. This is finally a true "portable transportable" for games and Direct X10, s'il vous plait. We could blame the low autonomy, but in reality a 17 "does not really mobility, but just a few movements. It is therefore a real achievement, but this beautiful toy at a price unfortunately. It was sold in 2500 €, (with a disk of 200 GB 7200 rpm instead of the 250 GB 5400), which is still a sum. But at this price, you're about to get for your money, and power play during a certain time. Vivement model 8800M GTX in SLI.
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