Just recently got a Dell Studio 1749 with an i5 540M CPU and a 1080 17.3 screen.
I will say, the Dell 1749 has been reported to having rather poor viewing angles with the standard 900 screen, but the 1080 screen I got with mine has been perfect... Its actually VERY good..
the ATI 5650 GPU is mid range, but its still very powerful. Dell haven't clocked it to the full, or so I'm lead to believe, but it was still quick enough to run Batman Arkham at 1920 x 1080 high details at av 35fps.
The Dell also has a rather nasty habbit of kicking the fan in and not turning off after intensive gaming... so I've just found out. Its not too bad, its fairly quiet....
As the ATI 5650 would struggle with more recent games, adding the better 1080 screen could mean you'd end up playing some games in a none native res, but honestly I tried COD World at War at 1280 x 720 and the game flew and looked every bit as good.... Its a mid range laptop, its amazing it can run top end games at all..
The Dell speakers are fantastic BTW. The sound is very good, and also the HDMI passes 5.1 and works great with 1080p plasma TV's.
Overall the Dell Studio 1749 is a very capable laptop, and I'm rather chuffed with mine but it does have faults.
Lack of USB ports
Top touch button panel is flimsy
Picks up finger prints and dust all over, nightmare to keep looking tidy
Its quite heavy, very large
Fan kicks in to often with intensive use
Poor eject button for DVD /Blu Ray
No DVI socket, has a VGA instead..!!??
But it also has pros
Fantastic speaker package built in
Superb performance for mid range
Fantastic 1080p screen
Amazing HDMI support
Large HDD with option for second HDD
Backlit keyboard is superb - worthy upgrade
thats all I know about the Dell Studio 1749, hopefully someone can answer the Asus questions for you..
