Dell XPS M1710 Review

Think of something modest. Paris Hilton! No, no, something subtle. A KISS concert! No, something quiet and tasteful. A tricked-out Escalade with 22-inch chrome rims and spinners! A diamond-studded grill on your teeth!

You're thinking of the Dell XPS M1710, aren't you?

The XPS line surpasses Dell's Inspiron and Latitude notebooks as the company's high-performance and hardcore gaming brand. The M1710 is Dell's highest-performance gaming laptop. And our test unit was more or less the maximum M1710: Inside a magnesium-alloy case bedecked in Special Edition Formula Red (lesser models are black) lurked an overclockable 2.33GHz-and-beyond Intel Core 2 Duo T7200G processor; Intel's 945PM chipset and Pro/Wireless 3945ABG WiFi adapter; a 17-inch widescreen display; and a best-in-class 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics accelerator.

Other features included 2GB of DDR-2/667 memory; a 100GB, 7,200-rpm Hitachi hard disk; and a Blu-ray Disc drive -- for watching sharper-than-DVD movies and burning 25GB or 50GB BD-R and BD-RE discs for roomier-than-DVD storage, as well as reading and writing familiar DVD and CD formats.

(This and the next two paragraphs updated 2/13/07:) The system also came with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition instead of that operating system's successor Windows Vista Premium, though the latter is standard on other XPS M1710 models. The reason? While the Matsushita Blu-ray drive works fine under Win XP, Dell is still waiting for a driver to make it work under Vista.

On Microsoft's public release date of January 30, Dell changed its PCs' default preinstall from XP to Vista, removing the Blu-ray option from its online order form in the process. But this week the Blu-ray/Win XP configuration is back, with a free upgrade to Vista when the tardy driver arrives.

The bottom line for our crimson commotion was $4,249. That's a bucket of money for any PC, but Dell has smartly positioned the M1710 between mere mortal notebooks and the sky-high-priced, 20-inch-screened, dual-graphics-processor monsters sold by some specialty vendors. Unless your friends arrive at your LAN gaming parties in Bentleys, you're not likely to be outgunned.

Similarly, while the XPS weighs a hefty 8.75 pounds -- 10.9 pounds if you add its industrial-strength, 130-watt AC adapter -- it's closer to being portable than quite a few of the portly desktop replacements on the market. (It's no easier to fit into a briefcase, though, measuring 11.3 by 15.5 by 1.7 inches.)

Most of all, though, the M1710 is loud and it's proud: The front edge, side cooling vents, and big XPS logos on top all contain LEDs that can glow, pulse, or cycle through your choice of 16 garish colors. Dell's supplied QuickSet control-panel utility lets you choose colors and lighting effects to match those of any tower-cased, clear-windowed, game-freak desktop.

Rock Around the Clock

At 2.33GHz, the Core 2 Duo T7600 is Intel's fastest mobile CPU, flaunting not only its clock speed but 4MB of Level 2 cache shared by the two processor cores and a 667MHz front-side bus. Check the box marked T7600G on Dell's order form, and just one thing changes -- OK, three things if you count the extra initial and a $275 hike in the system price.

A quick visit to the BIOS setup screen (reached by pressing F2 during bootup) lets you overclock the T7600G, climbing in 166MHz steps to a new ceiling of 3.16GHz -- yes, an almost 36-percent pushing of the processing envelope.

The legal language on the BIOS screen says, "Dell does not recommend operating the processor or other system component beyond factory default settings," adding, "If the system shuts down unexpectedly or is unstable, please select a lower processor operating frequency." Buried in the fine print is the news that "Dell Tech Support will verify the full functionality of the CPU up to one speed step above the factory default setting," i.e., 2.5GHz.

Only one step? Sorry, there are no wusses at the Labs, Weather, & Sports Desk. We promptly overinflated the Core 2 Duo's tires and revved to the 3.16GHz redline for most of our testing -- and were pleased to escape largely unscathed, with only two hangups in a week's worth of running benchmark and application software.

Dell clearly designed the XPS M1710 to survive overclocking, even with air instead of liquid cooling: The most annoying thing about running at 3.16GHz was that the notebook's dual cooling fans, which normally turn on and off depending on under-the-hood temperature, rev up to full spin and stay there every second you're in overdrive, making the M1710 audible across a good-sized room and downright loud for its user.