XPS M170 Gamer's Review!

System Specs:

Dell XPS-M170
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB
Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition 
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm 
100GB 5400rpm Hard Drive 
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability 
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11 b/g, 54Mbps)
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7800 GTX

 Packaging:

The system arrived nicely boxed with nothing loose floating around in the box.  Upon opening the box upon first inspection I thought the top was scratched, but luckily it was just in the protective film on the top.  Once I took off the film I was pleased to find a very nicely brushed aluminum cover (scratch free)!

 Initial start-up:

After going through the normal set-up prompts I finally get into Windows to see how everything looks.  My only real complaint is that the system comes with too many useless programs installed (useless to a gamer at least).  That and after initializing Norton Internet Security I could not get it to recognize on my home network. This was because of the Personal Firewall that Norton runs. After turning off the Norton Personal Firewall all was good and I could begin streaming files from my desktop to the laptop and vice-versa. Since this is a gaming review I will not get into all the software features, but they are numerous and should make most users happy. Unfortunately my system came with MS XP Home and not Media Center Edition.  I will see if I can get Dell to provide me with MCE instead though.

 Screen Resolution:

Not sure what everyone is complaining about with light leakage and sparkles, this is my first laptop so maybe I am not as particular, but I find the screen to be very clear and the performance is everything I expected. The 1920x1200 resolution took me a bit to get use to as I have been use to a 19" CRT running at 1024x768 so needless to say everything seemed a bit small at first. Initially I was thinking of getting a 20” wide-screen for the desktop, but the 17” is more than enough for this gamer.

 Movie Playback:

One of the first things I did was to throw in the Sin City DVD.  I was pleasantly pleased with the quality of the DVD playback on the 17" wide-screen; the picture quality rivaled any other LCD screen at this size including LCD TVs.  The buttons on the front of the system make adjusting sound, pausing and re-starting convenient.

 Gaming Performance:

The game I installed for this review was F.E.A.R. Why? Because I believe that F.E.A.R. is the most system taxing game out right now. At first set-up I became a little worried because the game set my computer at minimal during the auto-config.  I initially set-up the game with max settings for both computer and graphics and returned the following tests.
Initial test at 1024x768: 24fps min, 45fps average and max of 103fps (below 25fps 1%, between 25 and 40 fps 46% and above 40fps 53%).
Lowering the resolution to 800x600: yielded a test of 36fps min, 66fps average and max of 163fps (below 25fps 0%, between 25 and 40 fps 13% and above 40fps 87%).
Raising the resolution to 1600x1200: 11fps min, 21fps average and max of 45fps (below 25fps 77%, between 25 and 40 fps 22% and above 40fps 1%).

As you can see running at 1600x1200 yielded un-acceptable results.
800x600 or 1024x768 is the way to go. Considering some desktops would be hard-pressed to get these numbers I was very pleased and I’m sure with some tweaking I can get higher numbers without giving up too much graphics quality. I really wished F.E.A.R. ran in a native wide-screen mode. Next I will load Half-Life2 and FarCry.

 Sound:
The stock speakers and sub woofer are a nice feature, but for playing games nothing compares to a good set of headphones or a nice 5.1 or 7.1 system.  I chose to use headphones as it blocks out the surrounding noises and also does not annoy the wife.  I must say that playing F.E.A.R. with headphones is pretty creepy. As you can hear every little footstep and ambient noise in the game (it really adds to the experience). I also tossed on the headphones while watching Sin City and the sound was superb. Overall I do not have a solid review on sound as I have not plugged it into anything other than a good set of headphones.

 Overall Conclusion:
As a portable desktop replacement the Dell XPS M170 fits the bill perfectly, at just over 8.5lbs this user feels the portability of the system is more than one could hope for with features and power to spare. As a gaming laptop the Dell XPS M170 is an extremely capable system the only thing that might make the system better would be if Dell would experiment with using AMD CPU’s. AMD still holds the edge where gaming is concerned, but these latest crops of Intel chips are closing the gap, especially where portable gaming is concerned. The standard features on the base system are probably more than enough for most users.  The 2gig of ram and NVIDIA 7800 GTX video card my system has is probably overkill for the current crop of games, but this just means I will most likely be sitting well for the next couple of years with this system. Hopefully I will not need to upgrade till after Windows Vista and Vista enhanced games start to arrive. I am actually so pleased with the Dell XPS M170 I may scrap my plans for a new desktop gaming rig all together.

 Pricing:
The rig above can be bought from the Dell Small Business Division for $3252 before tax and freight.  If you are lucky enough to find a 30% off coupon you can save roughly $1000 off of that price bringing the price to somewhere around $2500 including tax and freight.  At this price I challenge anyone to find a better laptop gaming rig.

Please feel free to comment on my review and add your experiences with the XPS M170 as well.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Dante......