New Laptop?

[imported_Pemalite]

Alright! Now its my 21st today, And as a gift to myself I'm buying a new laptop.
I decided to go for a different brand other than acer this time, And have gone for a Dell. The model I have gone for is the Dell XPS M1710 And customized it to get rid of any crap I don't need, It features:
Core Duo - T7200 @ 2Ghz
Nvidia Geforce Go 7900GS
And 2gb of Ram.
All for a nice manageable 3,488 bucks.
I will be just getting a loan out and paying for it, Or use dells own financing program, But I would like to know is there any cheaper 'Gaming laptops' Similar or slightly worse in spec than the one I chose? I've tried cutting as much corners to lower costs, If I had been given the option I wouldn't have included the Hard Disk Drive, Or Wireless card thingy, And just used the ones out of my Acer laptop and put in there.
Its the first time buying a laptop over the internet, I usually have to travel 8 hours to Adelaide - my nearest capital city, And go shop around there, But I really don't feel like a road trip for awhile. ^.^

 

[Smith|]

If you're just getting the 7900GS, then go for the E1705/9400. The only tangible difference between the XPS line and the Inspiron line is the 7950GTX that you can get and the CPU that you can overclock, which is vastly overpriced. So, save yourself some dough and just get the E1705/9400. It'll have a slightly different case, but that's really it.

Also, right now is the worst time to buy a new laptop, considering the next big stuff for them (Santa Rosa/mobile G80s) is literally right around the corner.

 

[imported_Pemalite]

Yeah, But its not everyday that you turn 21, And I just get the best I can at the time, And going by how long my Pentium M + Radeon mobility 9700pro This new machine should last another couple of years, which then I would probably buy my next machine.
And besides hopefully the external Graphics card comes out!
And There are other ways to over clock mobile CPU's (Clockgen is one of them).
And I have my radeon constantly over clocked unless I want more battery life. I like the Acer cooling solutions, The laptop barely gets warm, and the fan hardly ever kicks in, Also that Dell laptop looks rather thick, Alot thicker than my Aspire 1680, Thanks smith, I think thats the machine I will go for, the 7800 should do me for quite awhile to come! I'll order it over the internet tomorrow, as Dell is currently doing maintenance or something.

 

[Smith|]

No, but I'm saying you're paying more for the exact same stuff. The E1705 is virtually identical to the XPS 1710. The only real difference is that the XPS's GPUs (7900GS+) have two heat pipes instead of one, meaning you can overclock it a little more.

Also, trust me, people have been trying to overclock the CPUs in Dell's laptops, with little success. The only recent CPUs that have been overclocked are a few of the Core (1) Duos, and that was with a pin mod, something that hasn't been repeated in these newest Core 2 Duo.

And besides hopefully the external Graphics card comes out!

Those aren't anything to be amazed by. They're running off of the ExpressSlot, which is basically PCI-E 1x. That's nowhere near the bandwidth to satisfy the high end cards.

 

[imported_Pemalite]

I really don't want to have to wait for it though, And I just googled to see if its possible to over clock the Dell laptop, It seems that you need to flash the video card bios, And they also lock the PLL so you cant use clockgen to ramp the frequency up. Merom might be a drop in replacement though, Which helps, Plus the graphics card uses the MXM standard, Also I remember back in the days of AGP 4x vs 8x seems there was only a 500 point difference in 3dmark, Lets see what the real world performance of the external graphics card is like. Again thanks for your help
And I have settled for the E1705 seems the price/performance is right up my ally, and it comes with a 17 inch monitor! I think my acer is a 14 or a 15 inch screen, cant remember.

 

[Smith|]

And I just googled to see if its possible to over clock the Dell laptop, It seems that you need to flash the video card bios

Yeah, but that's not too bad. There's also an 'unlocked' bios floating around, so once that's flashed, you can overclock like normal.

And they also lock the PLL so you cant use clockgen to ramp the frequency up.

Hence: "Also, trust me, people have been trying to overclock the CPUs in Dell's laptops, with little success."

Also I remember back in the days of AGP 4x vs 8x seems there was only a 500 point difference in 3dmark, Lets see what the real world performance of the external graphics card is like. Again thanks for your help

That's because AGP4x has 1GB of bandwidth while PCI-E 1x has 250MB. Trust me, there will be a huge bottleneck with that external GPU crap. Not only that, though, but you're required to have an external monitor to plug into it. It can't be rerouted back into the laptop, afaik.

And I have settled for the E1705 seems the price/performance is right up my ally

Huzzah.