The gaming gods have smiled on Dell's gaming notebook once again. It was only earlier this year that the Dell XPS M1710 (with the Intel Core Duo processor, code-named "Yonah") grabbed our Editors' Choice by being a performance demon and a gaming champ. The summer isn't even over, and the M1710 is already getting a processor transplant, adding the new 2.33-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 processor (code-named "Merom"). And if you think that's nice, the newly implanted draft 802.11n wireless chip is promising faster throughput (up to 270 Mbps) than the 802.11g standard. Dell is even including a Netgear draft-n router with your purchase. Thus, the M1710 model retains its Editors' Choice for a gaming laptop, sitting pretty at the top of the "portable" gaming throne.
Dissecting our SYSmark 2004 SE benchmark tests shows a 19 percent improvement over the previous Dell M1710 on Internet Content Creation and a smaller percentage increase (5 percent) on Office Productivity. The biggest improvement comes in my video encoding tests. Thanks to the Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor, video professionals should see more than a 20 percent differential. It helps, of course, that the Core 2 Duo processor is clocked a little higher than the 2.16-GHz Intel Core Duo on the previous M1710. The system finished Adobe Photoshop tests in exactly one minute—the fastest I've seen on any laptop. The M1710's performance scores even surpassed those of the Area-51 m5550, made by Dell's recent acquisition, Alienware, even though both machines have the same processor.
The Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor offers great gaming performance, as long as you keep the resolution below 1,600-by-1,200. Thanks to an exclusive relationship between Dell and nVidia, the XPS M1710 is one of the few gaming notebooks blessed with the nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics card. The system's 3DMark 2005 scores jumped slightly from the M1710 (Intel Core Duo)'s, but its Doom 3 scores benefited the most from the processor upgrade, leaping 28 percent. Splinter Cell scores also improved by 15 percent. I ran all of these tests at a 1,024-by-768 resolution. Battery life suffered a little—the system ran for just 2 hours 23 minutes—but chances are you'll be plugged in most of the time anyway.
The Dell XPS M1710 (Intel Core 2 Duo) continues to shine as the best gaming laptop on the market. Its outstanding performance with the new Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 mobile CPU and new features such as integrated 802.11n wireless have earned it another Editors' Choice.
Full Benchmark test results, and Laptop comparison chart.
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2008639,00.asp
