I have been planning to assemble a mobile gaming setup for some time now, finally figured out a workable option. I was skeptical that a laptop might not be able to perform for gaming so I picked as good configurations as I could.

Dell XPS M1710

Intel® Core™ Duo 2 processor T7600 (2.33GHz/667MHz/4MB L2)
17 inch UltraSharp 1920×1200
2GB DDR2 677MHZ,2 DIMM
512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
100GB 7200RPM SATA HARD DRIVE

Two most important things are CPU and GPU. I think choosing best in class gives you results. Another component you have to pay attention to while buying a laptop is the HDD. Most manufactures (especially Sony) just mention the capacity and ignore the spinning speed. Whatever CPU and RAM you get, if the HDD is consuming all the time in returning data, you are not going to get any performance.

After playing AOE III and NFS on this machine, I can say this works. I played these games on full settings and it gave awesome results, playing NFS with all effects on 1600×1200 resolution is amazing.

I configured this on dell’s website and price summed up to $4300. Don’t drop the idea of buying it due to this price though as there are some options on online forums which can drop the price. I managed to get this machine for $2900, delivered. A couple accessories to go with it:

Speaker: Klipsch Promedia 2.1A GMX ( $140 from amazon). Solid performance with good bass and high/lows.

Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution ($85) and its turning out to be a great. Click here to see the thread on NBF for this.

I will be posting some game shots. As of now I am playing AOE, NFS and Company of Heroes.