M1730 The XPS M1730 was announced on October 5, 2007 as the newest 17-inch XPS laptop computer. Compared to its predecessor, the XPS M1710, the model M1730 was physically redesigned with a completely new chassis available in a grey, white, blue, or red. Like the M1710, the M1730 offered unique user- and software-changeable LED lighting in the touchpad, fan outlets/inlets, as well as the lid and speaker grilles. Also like its predecessor, it featured a 17-inch widescreen. From the components angle, it supported overclockable Intel Core 2 Extreme processors (2.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz overclocked via the X7900 or X9000 Processor), dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTX video cards in SLI, up to two 7200 RPM SATA hard drives available in RAID, and up to 8 GiB DDR2 SDRAM . A Blu-ray Disc Drive was an option in some models. New with this latest version was a built in optional AGEIA physics card to enable PhysX enhanced titles take advantage of hardware accelerated physics, the option for 64 GB solid state drives, a back lit keyboard including a number pad, and a Logitech gaming LCD display above the keyboard. Criticism The M1730 has been criticized for its increase in weight and size compared to previous models, and for having only marginal performance gains in select games. The last complaint is likely due to a late Nvidia release of a mobile version of the 8800M video card which Dell added to the list of options following the release of the M1730. Upgrades Following the initial release of the M1730, the option to have dual 8800M GTX graphics cards in SLI was made available. This is said to have a 174% power increase (as quoted by Dell) over the dual 8700M GTs in SLI which were previously the highest available option. More recently an option to have dual 9800M GT and 9800M GTX graphics cards in SLI has been added to the line. The 9800M GTX SLI is currently the highest supported graphics card with 1 GiB GDDR3 VRAM for the M1730, as opposed to the 9800M GT SLI and 8800M GTX SLI only with 512 MB of available Video Memory and slightly higher amount of stream processors. Thus, performs slightly better than the 9800M GT and 8800M GTX cards. The availability of the 9800M GTX SLI is rare, and may only be purchased in limited Dell direct outlets and on eBay. And