Dell Courts Gamers with XPS M1730

Besides a powerful processor, Dell has paired its latest gaming notebook with Ageia's PhysX processor and Logitech's GamePanel LCD.

Hot on the heels of Voodoo’s Envy M:152 gaming laptop, Dell announced its own competitor for that niche market, the similarly named XPS M1730, on Thursday. “The beast,” as Dell is fond of calling it, is the first notebook to get a mobile PhysX processor from Ageia, as well as Logitech’s GamePanel LCD.

Upgraded M1730s get Intel’s Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo x7900 processor, which runs at 2.8GHz with support for overclocking up to 3.2GHz. Vanilla versions of the system get the Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 at 2.2GHz. They also have 2GB of DDR2 memory, an Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT GPU, and a 200GB 7200 rpm hard drive. A massive 17-inch LCD panel with 1920×1200 resolution serves as a desktop-replacement style display.

Ageia’s PhysX processor takes the load of physics processing off the CPU in a handful of supported games. Fortunately, Dell will include one of them, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2, with the system to give gamers a taste of what it can do. Other bells and whistles include Logitech’s GamePanel LCD, which first appeared on the company’s G15 keyboard. According to Dell, it allows gamers to view game stats, create new macros and track important system information without leaving the game.

When it goes on sale, base M1730 notebooks will sell for $2,999 with color choices of crimson red, sapphire blue, bone white and smoke grey.