Many people attributed Dell's recent purchase of Alienware to the perception that the giant PC maker just couldn't create the kind of cutting-edge notebooks and desktops that performance nuts and gamers want. Dell's XPS engineers must have missed that memo, because the new XPS M1710 notebook announced today looks pretty smoking.
Dell calls its XPS desktops and notebooks its luxury brand, and the XPS M1710 comes with the hardware, looks, and price to match that moniker. Most notable about the high-end unit is its nVidia GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics chip with 512MB of memory. Yep--this notebook has the mobile version of nVidia's fastest desktop GPU.
The company is offering two starting configurations of the M1710, in two different colors. The Metallic Black model starts at $2,600 and includes a 17-inch display, an Intel Duo Core T2400, Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, a 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS graphics chip, 1 GB DDR2 memory, and a 60 GB hard drive. The Special Edition Formula Red model starts at $3,400 and has the same display, OS, and RAM but upgrades to a Core Duo T2500, the 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GTX graphics chip, and an 80 GB hard drive.
Both versions also have an illuminated XPS touchpad and adjustable 16-color perimeter lighting. I guess that's so you can find your notebook back should the power go out at your LAN party.
We haven't tested the M1710 yet, but we did get to take a peek at a unit during a briefing a short while back and it looked sharp. We're looking forward to running the notebook through our WorldBench and graphics tests, so keep your eyes peeled for our official review in the near future.
