Computer Gaming World and The XPS M1710 - Page 2

I'm waiting.

Oh the irony I want to order one, but I can't since they arn't on the Dell's site, yet the magizine is compelling me to buy one that isn't their

Same misery, but good company!

I do have to wonder the flood of orders they are going to be getting. You do realize that even with an order in, even one of the earliest orders in, we may not see machines till June right? lol

Such is the way of it.

Post a scan!!!!

We all want the scans - but all the owners of the mag are going "mine mine all miiiinnneeee"

if u did get the m1710 u cud just upgrade to the first gen meroms when they come out i think...and im sure the 7900gtx wont be the ONLY card to ever fit in the dell, wont a DX10 card fit?

Merom is 95% likely to work - the 667 version only but that's a 20-30% cpu boost plus 64 bit so that's a great upgrade.

DX10 is unknown. G80 will be DX10 capable but not perfectly native. That has led to speculation as to what it will or will not do. It is due in the July-Sep timeframe (desktop), so I'm expecting an August refresh of the Go version, possibly Sep at the latest. This will bring DX10 capability, but will it go into the 1710? I'm going to say on a guess yes probably. Typically in Dell's design of the XPS series has been to follow through on at least one gpu upgrade card in the machine's lifetime. If that's true then the G80 will be that upgrade. G80 represents a likely 30-45% performance boost and maybe multiples of that if the DX10 rumours are true but don't hold your breath on those rumours.

So Merom highly likely yes and a superb upgrade.

DX10 via G80 75% likely since Nvidia made a ton of $$ on mobile gpu sales last quarter and they and Dell would probably like to do that again.

Does that help?

There's no way to know exactly what will fit into it. Merom is supposed to, but it wouldn't be the first time that Intel doesn't follow through with a promise if it doesn't. As far as a DX10 card, there's no way to tell until they get closer to coming out.

I would agree with you it's not certain on Merom. However on 3 occasions now there has been news of people actually dropping Merom into current Yonah notebooks, rebooting and having it work. Were it not for this independent testing I wouldn't be as strong behind this. Could it still fail on the proprietary hardware in the 1710? Yep. So it's not guaranteed. However having folks drop it into random notebooks (MSI as one I recall by brand name but not model #) and having it work, gives a strong evidence that is the goal from Intel. This is being done to combat the 64 bitness of the dual core AMD chips coming and it was planned. That's not guarantee but its extremely good motivation. Hence why I gave a 95% chance.

DX10 I'd agree. But again the market economics speak that the notebook market is exploding and in no small part due to notebooks finally having a small but possible upgrade path. There is a reasonable motivation in the industry (especially by Nvidia) to make that a viable sales channel. That way they sell to the upgraders as well as the new machines. It's not rocket science. Dell likes the idea too if its relatively problem free (support is expensive). Otherwise buyers only come to buy new notebooks every 2-3 years. If they can manage to sell a buyer a $500 replacement part every year during that time, they increase profit. Would those buyers upgrade a whole notebook if that card wasn't available? Yes but only a small % would due to the cost. So the motivation is there on the sellers part but can it be done on the heat and power budget set up in the 1710 for the gpu? That is a question mark, but Nvidia has done a gradually better job at keeping power and heat in check on newer gpu designs. Since the G80 is at least a 90nm and possibly a 65nm design, that seems likely to continue. That gives a reasonable chance, high motivation to sell, reasonable engineering ability to deliver a product, that there will be a G80 to fit the 1710. Remember the final thing too. The XPS2 got 300% more popular when the 7800 came out and people could drop that into the 6800 machines. Buyers bought that machine in droves. Even the 9300 and 9400 remained popular for similar hopes. Dell isn't ignoring that angle. If you see they bought Alienware they know where the rabid purchasers are, and they are seeking them out. They won't ignore basic business for sure, but bet they know what makes the XPS business machine tick and they'll feed that machine to withdraw cash for as long as they can manage.

So I give the G80 a 75% possible.

There you go

Latest I heared G80 will not support DX10. They wern't able to make working unified shader . No wonder. Unified shader make GPU more like general vector processor, That is a huge leap in technology, like form 2d video card to 3d hardware T&L. I even doubt DX10 will be out in 2007.

They couldn't make it fully unified, correct. In fact the G80 will include significant portions of the G71 (7900) as well. However they will be making it fully DX10. How? Its not clear at this point, however they've been quite strong on that point nonetheless. So we'll have to see.

If nobody is going to post a scan, could someone at least type out the list of equipment in the two specs? What is in the sub-2500 one versus the 3k+ one?

looks nice, but i think i will stick with mine, untill the new ones drop in price some more. dont want to spend over 1600 bucks

If I were a betting man, I'd say the integrated Audigy and 512MB 7900GTX. The "black" version will no doubt be carrying the 7900GS and Sigmatec Audio, the "red" edition the Audigy and GTX.

...it's just logical.

Of course, I'm ALSO betting Dell has made provisions that you can't simply change a "black" into a "red" partswise, either.

Why, destruya? The bulk of inspiron owners don't even know of this site, or of all these upgrade options. Computer nerds generally build desktops. Consequently I believe that those... changing 9300s to xps' is minimal... what, 10 ppl on this site? Thats pathetic, in Dell's view, i doubt they really even acknowledge that it's really happening. The loss they'd have from making a huge diff in "black" and "red" is probably grater than the loss they get from the 10-20 modders on this site. unless we all go public and mod for a profit :P.

Ya, 99.9% of laptop owners never even think of trying to upgrade. Dell sells 150,000 computers a day, they benefit from streamline assembly, I doubt they would take steps to make it prohibitive for someone to turn a "black" into a "red".

Yeah, I agree. the ONLY differences between a m170 and a i9300 is the motherboard itself, the case color, and the LCD panel cover (with LEDs)... All in all, it's all pretty modular between all the systems.

I think it's Audigy software driven on Sigmatel HD audio base - meaning no acceleration for Directsound.

512 - and I'm betting it runs 50mhz faster both on core and mem than the Quadro 2500 meaning 550/650 I think, putting it about on line with the 7900GT in speed - not godly but not too bad. Still will aim for a G80 which I'll expect is coming in the late summer to fall timeframe much like the 6800 generation when they got the 7800 treat.

4gb of memory should be great, but just read an article today on just how hot those modules get. So be careful if you go fullbore. Personally I'll take 2gb now, for both usefulness and heat reasons, then take it to 4gb for Vista with the hope that they'll have improved the heat output on 4gb of mem by then.

I'm really hoping I'm wrong about the sound. I'd truly love it if they'd put Audigy 2ZS internal, especially since we can't get either Audigy 2ZS or Xifi on expresscard right now. So whatever they give us we use unless we use the USB option. The USB Audigy 2 NS has to be plugged in however, not exactly a good solution. Again, my dearest hope is that Aud 2 is internal.

I have seen the pics on Dell's site and I can live with the red color scheme. I'm even growing to like it, though it would have been better black, the gray/silver is dark enough to be interesting. So that's good.

Would have been icing on the cake if the 2.33 Yonah was available but 2.17 will do just fine for now. Would sure be nice if they'd make an 802.11N based wifi card for this machine. I have the inkling that the Intel card won't be enough and I was planning to shift to 11n in the next few months.

So do people like the looks? Any news on internals?

I wouldn't shift to 11n just yet - they still haven't finalized it.

The way things are going, WiMax will be certed before they finally get their shit together on 11n.