So i am looking to buy a good gaming laptop in the very near future and currently am trying to decide between two different options. I have consulted my friends but I am still undecided.

The 1st one is a custom XPS from Dell and the 2nd is a Satellite from Toshiba. I will post the stats on them below in just a second but from what i have heard there are mainly just a few questions.

I am getting this laptop for two reasons:

1) I am going to college and staying in a dorm. My college requires that I have a laptop; most of the time it will be sitting at my desk, I don't expect to move it around a lot.

2) Gaming. Specifically, I want to be able to run Age of Conan proficiently.

Essentially this question is more about the cases and the power supplies than the components. Are the power supplies adequate? Which has a better cooling solution? Which will run games, particularly dx10 games, better? The motherboard and processor from my last desktop, from iBuyPower, melted because the power supply and cooling solutions were not adequate.

XPS M1730

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 (2.5GHz/800Mhz FSB/6MB cache)
Operating System:
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition
LCD Panel:
17 inch UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-screen WUXGA
Memory:
4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
Hard Drive:
Speed: 160GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) Free Fall Sensor
Video Card:
NVIDIA®GeForce®8700M GT graphics
Wireless Networking:
Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965a/g/n Mini Card
Primary Battery:
85 WHr Lithium Ion Battery (9-cell)
Sound Options:
High Definition Audio 2.0
Physics Game Accelerator:
AGEIA PhysX™ 100M Processor




Satellite X205

Operating System
•Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (SP1, 32-bit version)
Processor and Chipset
Intel® Centrino® processor technology featuring:
•Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T8300
-2.40GHz, 3MB L2, 800MHz FSB
•Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset
•Integrated Wi-Fi® compliant wireless LAN
-Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n)4
Memory
•Configured with 3072MB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM (both memory slots may be occupied). Maximum capacity 4096MB
Hard Disk Drive
•320GB using two Serial ATA hard disk drives;
-Primary+Secondary drive: 160GB (7200rpm) + 160GB(7200rpm)
Graphics
•PCI-Express™ x16 graphics subsystem, featuring:
-NVIDIA® SLI™ Dual GeForce® 8600M GT, 512MB GDDR3 discrete graphics memory, plus up to 255MB dynamically allocated shared graphics memory using NVIDIA® TurboCache™ technology.
•Total Available Graphics memory 767MB
Sound
•4 Built-in harman/kardon® stereo speakers with 1 subwoofer
•Sound Volume Control Dial
•Built-in microphone

If the laptop gets damaged due to poor cooling then you send it back, get the extended warranty as laptops often break down. The top one is overall better for gaming, but Age of Conan is a very demanding game so not sure if it will run at the 1900x1200 native res of the monitor. But the xps better graphics card and more ram will be good, physx card is a bit pointless tho, i'd take it out to save some money if that's possible.

An 8 series GTX or GTS would be better however.

well the satalite seems to have the better graphics card. sli 8600. i think that it would be the fastest. go with that.

here is the satelite i found with a better processor than yours:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6834114455

I will admit to being a fan of MOST things Dell... but if you're looking for a gaming laptop, that's REALLY not the way to go. Stroll on over to Gateway and look at their 17 inch gaming laptop with an 8800 GTS. Cheaper and faster... kinda hard to beat that combination.

And I'm not going to say anything rude about the inclusion of the PhysX card in that laptop *snicker*

Neither, 2 8600m or a 8700m arwe about the same, they pretty much amount to 1 8600 GT. An 8600 GT can barely play Conan, let alone anything else for years to come, so here is what you do. Buy a Dualcore laptop with 2GB of ram for around $500. Now use the other $1500-$2000 and build a decent Desktop for gaming, I can NOT imagine the College saying NO to a desktop PC. Hell, I'll even pick out the parts for you if you list your budget.

Required
OS: Windows Vista/XP
Processor: 3GHz Pentium IV
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: Shader Model 2.0 and 128MB RAM: NVIDIA GeForce 5800 or ATI 9800

Recommended
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz (E6600) or better
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950GX2 or better
RAM: 2GB or more

Enhanced for: DirectX 10, 64-bit processors, multi-core
Supports Parental Controls on Windows Vista

Yeah... the 8600 GT can not compete with a 7950 GX2 and an online game can kill a graphics card because of internet related bugs that can use up a lot of resources.

Just going to throw it out there, if you aren't planning on moving it around often and game at various location, it would be better to just get a small, light, long battery laptop sufficient for word processing and internet and then get a kickass gaming desktop in addition. It will work out being far cheaper for these two computers, and then you can have both mobility and perfomance.

^ Hehe beat ya to it

Gateway P-172S FX:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668033.php

For $1300, you get a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, a 512MB 8800GTS, 160GB 7200RPM HDD, and 3GB RAM. The 8800GTS will slaughter the 8600 and 8700, plus it's cheaper. This is probably the best gaming laptop you can get for under $3k.

Best deal under 3K? Yes. Best laptop? No. You can get a well configured Sager NP5793 for around 2300 (includes an 8800mGTX). The Gateway is, however, an exceptional deal.

BTW, the M1730 is one ugly MOFO.

Just remember that Gateway has been losing money for years and may very well not exist by this time next year.