You’ve seen the details on Engadget. You might have seen the promotional video we released on YouTube. Today, our XPS M1730 gaming notebook—the machine our development team calls the beast—is available for order in most regions today. We will offer it to customers in Latin America later this year.
So, what makes it a gaming machine?
- It supports the latest Intel processors, including the Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz (Bin+2).
- It supports dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8700M GT graphics cards in SLI mode.
- All models come with a bright 17″ Ultrasharp 1920×1200 display with a 7ms response time.
- It’s the first notebook in the world to support AGEIA PhysX 100M mobile physics card.
- It supports two hard drives in a RAID 0 or 1 configuration
- It’s the first notebook we’ve shipped that integrates Logitech’s GamePanel LCD, which displays stats and in-game details for a growing list of game titles.
- It also features a full-sized backlit keyboard that has a 10-key number pad
I’ve seen some stories like this one from Anandtech mentioning that there are only a few titles out there that support the PhysX card. Customers who order it will receive a copy of one of those games—Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. There’s more games coming that will also support the card: Unreal Tournament 3, Warmonger, and one that I’m really looking forward to called Crysis.
Update 9-28: Direct2Dell reader Keith correctly pointed out that Crysis will not have PhysX support. My mistake for the oversite—sorry about that. I’m still looking forward to it in November though. LM
To accommodate all these hardware options, this machine is big. It’s thick too, and that’s because the NVIDIA 8700M GT card can be swapped out for the next-generation SLI card later this year. We begin taking orders today and expect to ship most orders within 10 days from the time the order is processed.
The XPS M1730 unveiling will be part of Dell’s activities during the DigitalLife event September 27 – 30 in New York City. Dell and Alienware are sponsoring an on-site gaming tournament there, and Valve Software’s Gabe Newell will also show off some content from their upcoming compilation called The Orange Box.
Update 9:30a.m.—Louis Bruno, who’s a gamer and also one of the service program managers for XPS desktops and notebooks, provides an inside look at the XPS M1730.
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