They may not be the first, but Dell’s 17-inch XPM M1730 “Beast” deserves a warm welcome to the NVIDIA 8800M GTX club regardless. The dual-card update represents a 49% performance gain (3Dmark06) over Dell’s previous top-end, dual 8700M GT card configuration. That puts the laptop on par with the DX10 performance of many new desktop rigs. Available now-ish in the US for $700 more than the dual 8700M GT option. However, orders placed today are estimated to arrive on February 20th with a cautionary footnote of possible delay. Ready for EMEA and AsiaPac regions sometime “soon.” Now, if only Alienware would update us on their M17x availability we’d have our 17-inch, 8800M GTX gaming options sorted.