A simple glance at the M1730 establishes that this notebook is not for those who do not want to show off. There is no other notebook like this on the market. For starters, the M1730 is absolutely enormous; its weight starts at 10.6 pounds and is two inches thick.

Dell chose an intimidating design scheme for their flagship notebook. The visible exterior has a deep glossy black surface with a 'hydrographic' design pattern. The intricacy of the design can best be seen in a well-lit room. The back of the lid deserves special attention – two clear plastic windowed areas on the sides have a color background that is illuminated by the LED lights; our test unit has the Smoke Grey panels. The XPS M1730 is also available with Sapphire Blue, Crimson Blue, and Bone White. In the center of the lid is a large shiny Dell logo illuminated by a bright white LED backlight. The lid is an instant attention-grabber and the most visually striking part of the M1730 in this reviewer's opinion. The speakers in the front of the machine are illuminated by LED lights as is the touchpad and its buttons. While the LED lights on the back of the lid do not change colors, the ones on the front can. All the colors in the rainbow are available (more or less) and each speaker as well as the touchpad can be individually controlled via the Dell QuickSet software. The keyboard is LED backlit and visually impressive. This is the first machine I have ever tested with a backlit keyboard and I would like to see more notebooks implement this feature. It is useful in low light scenarios and for those late-night gaming sessions.

The build quality of the M1730 is impressive, as it should be for the price. The chassis feels as solid as high-end competing notebooks from Sager and Alienware. There is zero flex in the palmrest or surrounding area, although the area beneath the display does not feel as solid as the aforementioned surfaces. Pressing on the back of the lid did not affect the display. The undersides of the notebook are made from magnesium and add to the build quality of the machine. In addition, they also help with heat dissipation. Moving to the top of the notebook, there is one display latch in the center of the display and it is solid. Its gunmetal color is a smart match for the black and gray exterior. The lid closes with a reassuring 'click' and holds secure. The front of the M1730 is angled nicely when the lid is closed; the M1730 may be big, but it is also sleek. Its front end almost looks like it was aerodynamically designed. The gaps between the various parts on the notebook are evenly spaced and everything fits together well, which shows attention to detail.

Overall I am more than impressed with the level of build quality and the exterior appearance  of the XPS M1730. The flashy looks are a selling point of the XPS M1730 – buy this machine to get noticed.

The M1730 has a full-size keyboard with separate number pad. It is LED backlit which is a handy feature in a dark or low-light area. The overall feel of the keyboard is not as high quality as the rest of the machine in this reviewer's opinion; the keys feel thin and I do not feel that the keyboard is as solid as it should be. There is an ample amount of flex when slightly more than average pressure is used. On the plus side I like the way the keyboard sounds and most keys are in their normal positions.

Under the lid, you'll be pleased to find that Dell has upgraded the M1710's keyboard; a full number pad now sits in its rightful place alongside the primary keys. The XPS touchpad has been moved to the left so that it remains centered on the space bar. The silver keys are spaced well, have a responsive, pleasant feel, and are backlit with a clean white light that you can easily toggle off with a Function-key press.

The M1730 has one of the largest cooling solutions I have ever seen on a notebook. The entire backside of the machine is essentially one giant vent. There are two large-diameter fans in the bottom of the notebook which force outside air into the notebook. During normal use the notebook is nearly silent; the fans come on in intervals and usually do not stay on for more than a minute. It takes a skilled ear to hear the fans even with no background noise. In a silent room, a quiet movement of air can be heard when the fans turn on. While gaming the fans are always on, but again, they are extremely quiet. I noticed that in games that make use of the Ageia PhysX card such as Unreal Tournament 3, the left-most vent jets out warm air and slightly more noise is made. I should note that when the system is overclocked, the fans are locked at full blast which IS noisy. I do not recommend

The surface of the notebook stays slightly above room temperature which is also impressive. The back of the bottom of the notebook can get toasty after a while but it never felt too hot to touch.

Overall, Dell has done an excellent job of finding a way to cool down the beastly components of the M1730 while keeping the machine quiet.

The battery in the M1730 serves as more of an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) than anything else. Running with the screen brightness at full while surfing on Verizon wireless WAN, I measured 56 minutes of life. With the screen dimmed and the wireless turned off, battery life improved by about 20 minutes. Consider for a moment how much power this notebook consumes; Dell's regular Inspiron 17-inch notebook achieves almost 3 and a half hours of life with the same battery. With dual hard drives, dual video cards, and an Extreme processor, it is no wonder that the M1730 cannot stay unplugged for long. Anyone buying this notebook is probably not concerned with battery life so I do not view it as a con.

The M1730's stereo speakers are located at the front of the notebook below the palmrest area. Two small speaker cones can be seen through the speaker grills; they visibly pulse when playing music at elevated levels. For notebook speakers, the M1730's are wonderful. Treble is respectable and while bass is a bit lacking, it is still noticeable which is not something that can be said about many notebook speakers. Sound is detailed; I could hear bullet shells hitting the ground in games and picks hitting guitar strings in acoustic music. Overall, Dell has equipped the M1730 with two competent stereo speakers which suffice for playing music and games.

The M1730 has two headphone jacks located on the left side, which allows two people to tune into a movie or other audio.

I had high expectations for the fully-loaded review unit Dell sent us. The Core 2 Extreme X7900 is a rare and special processor in that it will not work in most Santa Rosa notebooks; its TDP is higher than most notebooks’ cooling solutions can handle. The standard Core 2 Duo mobile processor has a 35W TDP in comparison to the X7900's 44W. A heavy-duty heatsink is needed to handle its high heat output.

The real advantage to the Intel Extreme processors is their unlocked multiplier, so overclocking is simple. I ran each benchmark that involved scoring the processor twice; the first time with the processor at its stock 2.8GHz clockspeed, and the second time overclocked to 3.4GHz via the BIOS. The maximum overclock is 3.4GHz. Dell allows the end user to set 2.8GHz (stock), 3.0GHz, 3.2GHz, and 3.4GHz via the BIOS, but they recommend that the machine be run with 2.8GHz.

Testing notes: Prior to testing, I defragmented the hard drive and did a Windows Update. I installed the latest Nvidia drivers (169.04) for the video cards. All frames per second (FPS) benchmarks were done with FRAPS.

System Performance Benchmarks

Windows Experience Index

Performance Difference (Stock vs. OC) (Processor): 0.00%

Oddly enough overclocking the processor did not help the WEI score at all. However, 5.7 is dangerously close to the highest-possible score of 5.9.

PCMark05

PCMark05 Comparison Results

Performance Difference (PCMark score): 9.15%

The overclocked processor improved overall performance by about 9%. The M1730 is already blazing fast so it is doubtful whether the extra increase in CPU power will be noticed while running everyday applications. For more processor intensive applications, a nearly 10% gain is significant.

Processor Performance Benchmarks

wPrime

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Performance Difference (32M): 00.77%

Performance Difference (1024M): 10.44%

The effect of the higher-clocked processor is slightly more pronounced in wPrime, which is almost entirely CPU-dependent.

Hard Drive Performance

HDTune 2.53

The HDTune result for the dual 200GB 7200RPM Hitach hard drives in RAID 0 is stellar. This is the fastest hard disk performance we have seen in a notebook to date. Both drives were inaudible, even while reading and writing.

Synthetic Gaming Performance Benchmarks

3DMark06

3DMark06 Results and Comparison:

Performance Difference (3DMark score): 2.52%

Performance Difference (CPU score): 13.22%

While the overclocked processor did not make a large impact on the 3DMark score as a whole, it did increase the CPU score by over 13%.

Ageia PhysX RealityMark

The M1730 is unique in that it has an Ageia PhysX physics processor card. Ageia's RealityMark is a physics performance measurement tool which, according to Ageia, can be used to gauge overall gaming performance during a game with a high amount of physics calculations. It is based on Artificial Studio's CellFactor: Combat Training game and its Reality Engine.

Performance Difference (PhysX Hardware): 8.80%

There is a huge performance difference between software rendering and hardware rendering as the benchmark shows.

Dell has respawned its flagship XPS gaming notebook into an even bigger and more powerful beast. The M1730 is one of the fastest gaming notebooks on the market and is certainly the flashiest. The M1730 is the most attention-grabbing notebook I have seen to date; its exterior appearance is sleek and intimidating. Taking the M1730 to a LAN party is sure to get one recognized. Dell has done a wonderful job with the M1730 inside and out; the software support may not be perfect at the moment but the hardware is all there, which is what counts.