Unique Dell XPS M1710 Review

Searching4Sasquatch writes "Hot Hardware has just posted a unique review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook. They stumbled across some very interesting information within the BIOS which seems to indicate Dell is working on a docking station with its own discrete graphics. 'The user is given the option of using either the integrated GeForce Go 7900 GTX GPU found within the system or the extremely interesting option of using the graphics card found within a docking station. Could Dell be planning on releasing an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of the notebook chassis? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"

How is this new?

[Thauma]

There have always been expansion docks for laptops that allow PCI and even ISA bus access. Hell there have even been carbus based graphics adapters for notebooks. All this is a bridge to PCI Express bus. There is nothing new to see here... move along.

Dell does this on their other machines as well

[Com2Kid]

Their (very popular) D600 has the same option in the BIOS.

This is nothing new, please move along.

This isn't new...

[SilentJ_PDX]

My IBM Thinkpad has had the same option in the BIOS for ages. Seeing how 'boring' IBM is, I'm guessing there are lots of notebooks with similar options in the BIOS.

Re:Latency/bandiwdth

[Anonymous Coward]

Who say it has to be an I/O bus or limited to 1 bus on an expansion connector?

New high speed serial busses like PCI Express takes up very few pins. They could have reserved some of those for the video card alone.

Re:How is this new?

[sk8dork]

if you want a Dell notebook that has a docking station connection on the bottom of the system so you don't have to use USB docks, then get a Latitude. *pets Latitude D620*

Latitudes have always had docking connectors. well, except for certain models like the X1 that doesn't have room for vents much less a docking connection.

Dell moved away from true docking connections on Inspirons some time ago. and yeah, XPS is now some generic word for Inspiron or Dimension pretty much now. XPS used to be THE high powered Dimension system, then the high powered Inspiron, now they make all these goofy flavors of XPS.

Re:Gaming laptops are over-priced

[Lave]

For my boys I built microATX cubes....for about 1/4th the price....Sure, you may be 10 or 20 fps slower than your buddies, with a little less detail in the shadows, but who cares (especially when most LCD monitors top out at 60Hz refresh rate anyhow ;-).

Your Children care.

Re:Gaming laptops are over-priced

[s31523]

Monitors are not a problem -- most people have monitors leftover in their basement/attic from when they upgraded to LCD, so they just connect to the surplus monitor, plug into their network and off they go
I also like to utilize my S-Video(or normal video) output and plug right into a big screen TV and play my games, if my friends don't have an extra monitor any modern TV will do!

lets try some rewriting..

[cinnamon colbert]

as posted
"Hot Hardware has just posted a unique review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook. They stumbled across some very interesting information within the BIOS which seems to indicate Dell is working on a docking station with its own discrete graphics. 'The user is given the option of using either the integrated GeForce Go 7900 GTX GPU found within the system or the extremely interesting option of using the graphics card found within a docking station. Could Dell be planning on releasing an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of the notebook chassis? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"

Written in English
"Hot Hardware has a review of Dell's flagship XPS M1710 notebook; they found information in the BIOS which suggests Dell is working on a docking station with its own graphics card. Customers can use either the laptop's graphics card, or a graphics card found within a docking station. Is Dell planning an enthusiast dock that features a high-end GPU that could not otherwise be crammed into the confinements of a notebook? Perhaps an upgrade to allow for standard or even Quad-SLI would be possible with such a dock.'"

and thats without even trying; 8.5 lines down to 6.5 - quite a savings
"interesting" should be used, at most, once per page.

Re:Display Hardware Objects

[raodin]

If graphics cards didn't need direct, high bandwidth, low latency access to the processor and system memory, we'd all still be using PCI graphics. AGP was specifically developed because newer, faster graphics cards needed direct, high bandwidth access to system memory... Textures don't magically appear in video memory, you know.

Re:Interesting

[Molochi]

The main reasons oem (not just dell but sony, hp etc...) tend to be much slower than one might expect.

1) Integrated graphics chips that share memory bandwidth with the system. Many (possibly MOST, I haven't checked the sales figures) Dells were sold in the last 5 years that had no AGP slot, just 3 PCI slots. Buying any cheap ( $50) PCI Videocard usually solves this... If you aren't already using the slots and if the bios allows you to disable the integrated graphics. There are a few integrated options that don't suck (the life out of your system), but Dell never used them until recently.

2) Slow memory. Early on, P4 systems were commonly equiped (because it was much cheaper)with single channel sdr-sdram (1GBPS) instead of dual channel "pc800"RDRAM(3GBPS). Woe unto the poor slob that wound up with a p4 running SDR memory and integrated graphics. Mid gen P4 cheapy systems usually (i845) came with single channel ddr266 or if you were lucky DDR333 and these weren't too bad for day to day use, tho' they were pretty weak compared to top of the line i850E or better chipset. The P4's performance "feel" (as well as benchmark scores) is closely tied to memory speed; much moreso than P3, PM, or Athlons of any stripe.

3) Crappy initial BIOS issues. I couldn't tell you how many systems I've worked on that started behaving like real computers once they recieved a bios update that was released 6 months after the system was sold to the customer. However most of those were HP/Compaq or momandpopbrand. Intel often has a bios update that will work better with a standard intel spec'd mobo than anything the OEM delivers.

4) Craptastic drivers, particularly IDE controller drivers that let the system fall back to PIO mode. This is oftem fixed with an update issued months into the model's run. Intel's own drivers sometimes fix this better than anything issued by the OEM.

I wouldn't say that every Dell I've worked on is slow. I would say that the majority of Dells I've worked on has an economy level motherboard, and below average performance parts that cost the owner less than $600 shipped. They paid for a crap level system and they got it. Congratulations. Here's your sign.

Re:Doubles as a frying pan for eggs!

[xenopizen]

I bought an XPS 1710 over 6 weeks ago and I am thoroughly impressed by it. The most important benefit is that fact that it is SILENT and COOL. I can literally play games on my lap. How Dell managed to get the 7900 GTX to run so cool is beyond me. Why is this astounding fact is missing from that review? This is the review that made me buy it in the first place: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2 887&review=Dell+XPS+M1710 [notebookreview.com] Even running the latest games with all gfx features on and at 1900x1200, it occasionally engages its fans, and then once finished it always stops immediately - and even so the fans are QUIET. And this is during the summer at 27 degrees C. Lastly, the only other important point to add is that the built-in speakers are awesome. I have a Logitech THX 2.1 for my desktop to compare against and thus I am not easily impressed. I simply cannot fault it.