Dell :: Santa Rosa Or XPS

I'm about to buy a new Dell notebook... but, I'm not so sure I want one of the new Inspirons. I'm a heavy gamer and movie watcher (This new laptop will be hooked up to my 37" LCD TV) and would like the fastest Dell available. I would buy a Sager or Alienware, but our dealer account with Dell kinda only lets me get Dell.

Are the new Santa Rosa platforms really the way to go? I would like to stay on the "cutting edge" as it were, with the newest technology out. But are they fast enough to play games decently? (Source, BF2, 2142, FEAR, Oblivion and so forth..) The 8600M GT isn't the fastest card out there, but should I go DX10 just to stay on top of things?

If I did, the specs would be:

Inspiron 1720

SYSTEM COLOR: Sunshine Yellow

PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7700 (2.4GHz/800Mhz FSB/4MB cache)

OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows® Vista Home Premium Edition

DISPLAY: High Resolution, glossy widescreen 17.0 inch display (1920 x 1200)

VIDEO CARD: 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 8600M GT

MEMORY: 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz

HARD DRIVE: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)

OPTICAL DRIVE: CD writer / DVD player (Combo Drive)

WIRELESS NETWORKING: Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-Card

BLUETOOTH: Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)

The XPS M1710 is of course my other choice, with slightly less up-to-date technology but the 7950 GTX clocking worlds faster than the 8600M

If I got an XPS the specs would be:

PROCESSOR: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7600G (2.33GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667 MHz FSB)

OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium

MEMORY: 2GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHZ, 2 DIMM

HARD DRIVE: Speed: 200GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)

OPTICAL DRIVE: 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability

VIDEO CARD: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7950 GTX

SOUND OPTION: Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™HD Software Edition

WIRELESS CARD: Intel Next-Gen Wireless-Ned

BLUETOOTH OPTION: Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Internal (2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate)