Hey all,
 
I'm planning to buy the XPS 1710, good reviews and high end. I have a few dilemmas however.
 
a.) I saw that for a small period of time, the 1710 was equipped with the 7950 GTX (I'm in the UK btw) and now is back to the 7900 GTX. Should I wait until this comes again?
 
b.) I save a lot of money by getting 1GB RAM instead of 2. How much difference will this actually make, ie can I get by comfortably with all games with 1GB and upgrade to 2GB in say 10 months or so?
 
c.) Do I wait for the quad cores to come out, so the prices of the core 2 duo goes down, or go for it now?
 
For the most part, I'm asking whether the currently offered specs are about to be refreshed or not.
 
Thanks for any advice,
 
Will

Hey, I have some intimate knowledge of this topic I would like to share with you.
 
I am guessing that they ran into a heat problem as that card rus hot, and their heatsink is less than adequate for it. I fabricated a 100% pure copper finned heat sink for the GPU and mod all my 7950 GTX systems with it. There is simply SO much heat thrown off by this thing it's unreal, and the heat sink that my systems start with are 2 heat pipe with an ancillary heat pipe while DELL's are not.  
 
With the 7900 GTX the fans will cycle off and on under normal use, but with the 7950 GTX they are off and on at idle! I am actually thinking about building a macro and attaching it to a system button to clock the things down when you're not gaming. Killer GPU's are awesome when you need them, just when you don't they can be a pain.
 
Also, an Inspiron 9400/1710 is the exact same thing as the XPS, you can even flash the BIOS so it thinks it is an XPS. The addition of some aftermarket North bridge cooling, a larger power supply and new video card and you have an XPS for far less cash.  
 
don't get the RAm upgraded from DELL, get your own and put it in, their proces are silly on upgrades.  
 
There are NO quad core notebook chips out, or scheduled to be out for some time. All the quad cores or desktop and server chips.
 

I see, that's interesting. I thought perhaps they had run out of stock or something. What do they even do if the chips start overheating but people have already bought the machine? Free refund or something like that? Oh well I'm not facing that problem.
 
It is surprising how these cards can sit in such a small package without melting the whole damn thing.
 
Now with all your advice in mind, my last dilemma is this. I can either buy the laptop now or mid-December (for a number of schedule reasons). Is there any advantage to waiting until December?
 
Thanks again.

Here is my thread on the 7950 GTX and how I modded it for the heat:
7950 GTX thread.
 
If you are going to go the Inspiron route, here are some coupons:  
20% off $999+
GP1RCD5BMM9?0S
You can get a pretty decent system for that.
The ONLY reason you may want to wait is on the outside chance that DELL drops a big coupon, like the $750 off (that they supposedly did away with) to make sales numbers for the end of their quarter.
 
This offer is not available on any other desktop system, and can not be combinable with other dollars off, percentage off or mail-in rebate offers. Online coupons not valid on the XPS series notebooks. Only one coupon may be applied per cart at checkout.