please help me decide if i should buy the 1730 xps.

well i have been having problems with my alienware m15x, described here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=228176

does the xps 1730 have theese issues?. how does the sli 8800m gtx version handle crysis? and is the 1730 loud? i dont really care if its fans spin up during gaming.

 

I know a guy with a 1730. He loves it. He is a heavy gamer and the 1730 suits all his needs. it is a sick laptop. I would get it. Even with the restocking fee you will be able to buy the 1730.....so its basically a trade (depending on configurations to a point though) The 1730 looks sick, its fast as hell, the lights are awesome and its a good laptop. Bit awkward to transport though...My friend has had no real issues with his other than dell screwing up his order which resulted in him getting

-Free 7200rpm hard drive 320gb maybe? i don't remember size....and got to keep the one that came in it
-they forgot to give him all the ram he ordered, they only put like 1 or 2 gb in it or something and he ordered 4....they sent to him....and he ended up getting credited the cost of the ram for inconvenience...etc....

I would get the 1730 thats my opinion.

 

I think you just got unlucky with your Alienware lappy to be honest.

But anyway, M1730 is powerfull machine. It is defenately fatser (and cheaper ) than M15x cause of dual 8800 GTX. The speakers on this lappy are good. Should be enough to watch a movie and stuff. The GPU does not underclock itself, at least i haven't heard of it happenning. One guy overcloked his GPU without extra cooling and was playing Crysis and it worked just fine.

Also someone from this forum got a copy of Assasin's Creed and it run on max settings smoothly on the lappy. Crysis with a bit of tweaking will run on high/very high settings DX10.

Edit: Oh, and all the people, who were mentioning keyboard were saying that it is the best laptop keyboard they've ever used.

I would recommend you to get this lappy. Besides, it has much better screan, than Alienware.

Edit: Oh, and all the people who were mentioning keyboard were saying that M1730 has the best keyboard they've ever seen in the laptop.

 

I'm not too impressed with my 1730. I received it as a replacement for a Dell 9300.
2.2ghz cpu
Dual 8700 GT
2gb ram

I mainly play wow, and while it's old it is still quite demanding. My fps did go up, but not as much as one might expect out of a system like this.

My 9300 with 1.8ghz cpu & 6800go & 2gb ram wasn't that much slower in reality.

SLI is alot of hype and extra cost in my mind. You have to sacrifice your second screen to use it. You game must be optimized to take advantage of the extra gpu (wow sees little to no gain from SLI, tested myself)

EDIT: oh yeah, and enabling and disabling SLI isn't as easy as it should be. I'm running XP with the latest drivers from dell and disable takes about 15 sec with tones of screen flicker. Enabling requires a reboot... which shouldn't be the case.

It lacks D/Dock, which is a pretty big let down in my mind.

Not to mention this thing screems ubber geek. I'm embarased to take this thing out of my house, my 9300 was much more subtle.


My girlfriend has a 1720:
2ghz (200mhz less)
3gb ram (+1gb)
8600M

and it's almost as fast and would have cost alot less.

 

that's because you got the weakest fake high end cards ever created..

the dual 8700's.

1 7900gtx 512 can whup them in every game over 1600x900 resolution.

 

Yeah, try an 8800 in your M1730, & you will go "WOW!"

 

Crysis with 1.2 patch, 174.xx driver-the system can do all high settings, 1900x1200 resolution, in dx10 mode averages in 30fps.

Pretty good for a laptop if you ask me!

 

how low does ur fps go? if i play the game in a lower res say 1440 will it looked jagged since its not native res? i want now lower than 30 fps.

 

I am going to order my m1730 or m1530 after reading your thread on the alienware m15x .......i don't want a non-tested microwave lol

this is my m1730 specs so far

Dell XPS M1730 - Smoke Grey
Intel Core 2 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB)
4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
200HDD / 7200RPM / RAID 0
NVIDIA SLI GeForce 8800GTX
Ageia PhysX 100M Processor
Internal Bluetooth
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
3-year dell care

$2,557 (EPP, $400 march coupon, adjustment)

 

Don't have exact number, but it's non-struggle 30 fps average, very playable.

 

Got my M1730 about a week ago and it is one mean machine, I would highly recommend it to any gamer. You have to get the 8800's tho to fully realize how great this machine is. It does put out some heat tho so I would say def. invest in a cooling pad imo, but for whats under the hood you have to expect that much.