Dell XPS M1730 questions..

1) Will the laptop burn the crap outta my bed if I use it while I'm on a bed?

2) How much does it overheat?

3) Do the fans make loud noises?

4) How is this beast of a laptop? :O

 

i think there is a problem with this sli setup: all games besides crysis can run on highest setting on a single high-end card. However, crysis cannot properly utilize the sli. i've looked at the benchmarks there's hardly any performance increase with the sli. so you're sacrificing a lot of portability with the 2-card setup, and not gaining any gaming performance (only better synthetic benchmarks).

 

1.The back of the laptop gets pretty hot, best to leave it on a desk, and use a netbook on bed...

2.The cooling is pretty well designed. As long as you lift up the back by a few cm, it will run fine. Anyhow, after reaching certain temperature threshold (75'c), the fans starts to work its magic.

3. Actually, the laptop is susprisingly quiet considering the spec.

4. If you are asking this, and haven't already known the answer, please just look elsewhere. google is your friend.

Actually, the returns with Sli is pretty decent on M1730. I can get about 45 fps at 1920x1200 at mostly high settings.

Crysis is a heavy game, nevertheless, V1.21 is more friendly on hardware than ever. Being one of the more demanding game, Nvidia works all the time to improve and optimise their cards performance on that game.

 

In that case, does SLI help for games like World of Warcraft? Or is that more cpu bound than gpu? (although the latest shadow shaders do have a big impact on performance)

 

Haven't played that at all... Though I hear Sli does not work...

 

you dont even need sli to max out wow, its not that demanding.
quicklite, can you give some more details on how crysis runs on your laptop?

 

1) Will the laptop burn the crap outta my bed if I use it while I'm on a bed?

Only if it malfunctions. Not from normal use.

2) How much does it overheat?

It doesn't unless something is wrong with it, ie broken fan

3) Do the fans make loud noises?

If you have an extreme proc and over-clock it to the max it sounds like a jet plane. If you use it under normal conditions it isn't loud.i

4) How is this beast of a laptop?

Plays most games at highest settings. Never played Crysis with it.

 

Most newer games can support multiple GPU scaling. Regardless, you are getting a powerful single card, especially if you opt for a 9800M GT. If one game may not give favorable results for SLI, then just use 1 card for that game. But most games, especially those at higher resolutions, will utilize SLI very well, usually up to 175% increase over 1 single card.
The review is here:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4085

 

sweet dream.

 

These % increase always throws me off. I always think that 200% means twice the power, but then that's actually 100%. Ehh...darn you math!

 

100% the power is the same as 1 since 1 is a whole and 100% equates to the full whole portion. so it would be 200% that would be correct.

 

See, depends on what you use it for? Gaming then a fully maxed one with x9000 CPU 3.4ghz Overclocked! 2x256 GB SSD in Raid 0, 8 GB of ram, and the rare optional 9800GTX in SLI then yes it's a Beast!