I am not convinced yet. XPS2>I9300?

I can play everything so far at 1920x1200 (my native res) with a non-Ultra.

The Ultra will probably outperform the Go even if the Go is only running at 1440x900 though.

Longevity the Ultra will last you a little longer for future gaming over the ddr1 6800, simply because the speed.

I had a 9300 and got a Gen2...The gen 2 looks like a much much more expensive machine, I LOVEEEE THE leds to my music, plus the custom ferrari logo on the back now, and the ULTRA is amazzzzzzing.


Get a Gen2 if you can spare the cash its worth it in the long run!

ouch, check around man, xps 2 is about 1790 now with coupons.

The XPS is worth the money, It is a stellar performer in games.

Remember playing games at native 1440x900 is easier then playing games at native res 1920x1200

I am currently clocked at 487/1200 and get 56XX in 3DMark05

"Looking more expensive" is a matter of opinion. I bought my 9300 because I use it at work and home. I work in a profesional place and the XPS2 would look way out of place.

I wondered the same thing when I was buying mine but did get a good answer.

Going to a higher res, epecially in a game like BF2 requires more GPU power with out a doubt. You logic seems on target.

I would love a real world test NOT 3dmark which is worthless. I wish BF2 had a benchmark like Doom3 or UK2004 and we had a test with a XPS2 at 1900x1200 and a 9300 at 1400x900 both with a 2.0ghz and 2 gigs of ram.

I would bet that the test results would show little or no real world difference.

I agree that the XPS2 would have more life, but hardware gets upgraded much faster than game engines. We have just seen a major overhaul of all mainstream game engines, Doom3 replaced Q3, HL2, Far Cry, BF2.....all of which took 2 or more years to get out to the market. In that time hardware came really fast.....the 9700Pro was not long ago.

I just bought an xps 2 with the 35 percent off coupon ($2000 with upgraded hardrive, os and 2 year warranty with accidental damage plan! Woot!) so my opinion may be alittle bias. In multiple tests on multiple sites when both an xps 2 and 9300 or simialerly equipped laptop with a go 6800 it shows the xps 2 with considerably better fps. The one at the top of my head is the xps 2 review at cnet.com here http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_XPS_Gen...2.html?tag=top . The Voodoo Envy in the comparison has the go 6800 and a comparable desktop processor. The scores in doom 3 and halflife 2 are noticably better, and certainly a difference would be seen while playing the games As for price there is about a 300 dollar difference between the 9300 and xps 2 currently, with the 9300 costing about $2000 simialerly equiped to the xps 2. And finally yes, at a higher resolution the fps would be lower, however switching out of native resolution in games should not cause any problems so playing at a lower resolution on the xps 2 would be fine.

Here's an easy difference between the two.

Lets assume a few things.
The 9300 has the 2.0ghz Pentium M and the WUXGA screen
The XPS2 has the 2.0ghz Pentium M and the WUXGA screen
Neither machine is being overclocked in any way, which means the warranty is 100% intact.

The XPS2 will score 30-35% higher in FPS for games, meaning the likelyhood of running games at native resolution is much higher.

Now if you overclock the 9300 video card, you can bring down the margin of speed difference to about 10-15% (depending on how your card does).. but the XPS2 is still faster at stock speeds.
If you overclock the XPS2 video card, the margin increases again to 30-35% faster.

The XPS2 comes with the 9 cell battery, a beefier power supply, the gigabit lan, a different look, and different support (I won't quote the quality difference, just saying it's another option).

When you spec out a 9300 with all the same features as an XPS2, the price margin is very close. The XPS2 will cost more then a basic 9300, it's up to you to decide how much you need and how much you want to spend.

The 9300 does have better battery life, however with some tweaks the XPS2 battery life can be improved significantly. (Undervolt the cpu, change multiplier, undercock the video card (hopefully we will be able to do this with a dell update and not a hacked bios)).

Hardware differences include:
XPS2 has gigabit lan, while the 9300 has 10/100
XPS2 has copper heatsinks for the CPU and GPU, while the 9300 does not
XPS2 has LED pin headers, while the 9300 mainboard does not

The 9300 is an excellant machine, no question about that. The XPS2 is a killer gaming rig right out of the box.

You forgot to add that if you get an X300 for an iXPS 2 the battery life goes up to 4+ hours and there is no heat being generated.