So I am looking at replacing my desktop next year with a laptop as I am away more than I am at home now, so I was looking at these two laptops to save up for and wondered which would be best for me.
I will be going for the top end XPS 13 (I need the 16GB RAM) or I will be going for the 256 rMBP with 16GB RAM but leaving the CPU as stock.

I play games like Roller Coaster Tycoon and Grim Fandango a lot which I know OSX does not support (Could be done with vms)
Which would be better off overall for the price?

Thanks!

What else are you using the laptop for?

"Roller Coaster Tycoon"-age games can probably play on a machine a few thousand dollars less.

I personally will never buy a Dell ever again for as long as I live.
And I'm not fan of Macs. They cost too much.

Check out this link for a nifty top 10. http://computers.toptenreviews.com/gaming-laptops/
(they're all a bit pricey for me)

Oooo! This looks like fun! http://www.toptenreviews.com/configurator/computers/gaming-laptops/
(nevermind. it wasn't fun)

well, I play a lot on mac (a lot of gog games), I also have a desktop computer but I like to play when I'm not at home (for that I have a macbook pro retina 15'' 2012 with a NVidia 650m and intel hd 4000 double GPU), and lots of this games are really easy to port with wineskin wrapper (you can find wineskin wrapper on portingteam forum or with a program called porting kit or you can use a program called playonmac (that use wine but it's not wineskin) or you can just make yourself follow winehq instructions).
Also there are some native games (grim fandango for example is native).

there are some few games you cannot port on mac (the witcher 3 because it need directx 11 not wine compatible, the longest journey because it does not run on wine and few others).

if you can port a game with wine it will run almost native.

you can also use virtual machine but you need a windows license and you cannot run games like the witcher 3 (bacause you need lots of resources).

you can finally install native windows on bootcamp and all games will run like they will run on windows. You need a windows license and bootcamp have to be in the internal HDD (you can move virtual machines and wineskin wrapper on extrernal drive if you want, not bootcamp).

if there is no price difference (or it's a little difference) and you can live without some games and you want to use OSX (that is a good system) you can go with the mac, if not XPS is a really good laptop.

Before buying any laptop you have to know that RAM does not matter on gaming, what does matter is the GPU... If you want to play modern games (like the witcher 3) you have to choise a desktop computer or a laptop with a discrete GPU. The model that you want to buy have an integrated GPU so it's not a good choise just to play.

20 year tech here, Dell and Apple service * I'd be happy to advise but: What he said... ^_^

Totally. And they suck ass for like 8 years.

Someone who gets it...
PPC made it different, now it's just the same.

I'd get the xps13 ... I'd also look at the new xps15, beautiful machinery

I don't know about XPS 13 but if you're gonna use windows apps a lot no point in using Mac imo. what makes you want mbp?

Well it will be used for everything really, hence the replacement :)
Because I am away a lot I just want it to play games, I don't really play triple A games now.
Other things will be either VMWare or Parallels so I can use Citrix for work (Image my work laptop to the VM).
Other stuff would be a light bit of photoshop for some edits I make when I actually use my DSLR (Mostly holidays)

See at work I get a lot of mixed reviews between Dell and Apple, but I also have had a lot of issues with HP and their GPUs and Fans failing (I work for a computer engineering firm)

Plus I understand the RAM is not physically tied so to speak to the GPU, although on works laptop I have allowed it more access to the RAM by bumping it up to 512MB (Amazing I know :P) but the 16GB RAM is used for other things, I have a lot of tabs open at once, currently just with this tab open and F-Secure/Skype/Citrix (Needed for work) I am using 3.22GB and it soon jumps to around 6GB, I don't want to start hitting the swap also so 16GB is kind of needed, this is all without Samsung RAPID mode enabled (Waste of RAM to be fairly honest)

As the laptops say I have around 1.5k budget for such laptop, I need battery over performance for the most part but I would still like at least a dual core i7 for the HT ability, a dedicated GPU is nice but how much of an affect does it have on battery life?

If someone like HP is the way to go, could you recommend a laptop that has 16GB RAM and i7 and at least a 256GB SSD? Screen minimum has to be 1080p, 4k would be nice but is not required as I dont expect it to push 4k in games, plus olds games = no 4k and it would only be useful to me on Youtube and Netflix at home (Im lucky enough to have a 200MB connection) which most hotels do not.

Thanks!

Avoid anything Apple, that's a first. Secondly, avoid Dell as well. There's Lenovo laptops and I think they're much better than both. I said all I had in my mind now.

Just looked at after support for the companies, top 3 are Apple/Dell/HP, currently only Dell and Apple offer me something in the ball park of what I want i7 + 16GB RAM
Ugh why cant we just have everything! lol

ignore apple haters fanboys... they just spoke without try... (mac are not perfect but only haters fanboys say that sucks).
usually desktop videogamers fanboys cannot understand why buy a laptop (they are kids because they do not realize that everyone has their own needs, not everyone needs a super powerful graphics card, for some it is more important the portability)

also more RAM you have more RAM will be used by a modern system (osx, linux or windows is the same), because RAM is the faster mass memory that can be used (cpu registry are really small), so if you have 4 GB the system try to use 3GB, if you have 8GB the system try to use 5-6GB if you have 16GB the system will try to use 10-11GB etc... because if there is free RAM the system will try to use it for non-necessary things, if there is not the system will free and compress the use of the RAM, if the system finish the RAM it will use swap on drive (and the system will slow down).
if now your system don't need 16GB the next system will not use 16GB. try to see the use of RAM on your system now, if there is a huge swap file you need more RAM, if not just go with 8GB. (if you use virtual machine and photoshop a lot there is a possibility that you need 16GB of RAM but usually 8GB are enought).

With VMs and work I expect I will need the 16GB, plus I hate using this word but its "Future Proof" more to the point it will last me longer, which of course when dropping this sort of cash on a device is always nice.
How has your experience been with OSX and GoG stuff? I mostly play Roller Coaster Tycoon from GoG, I also just got Settlers 7 which I would plan to play on the device, would something like bootcamp or parallels allow me to play this?
Personally OS does not dictate the device for me, while I do often slam the OS to other techies I also slam Windows for the same reasons but we have to get along with it.
Plus with the ability to VM most applications I don't have a problem just as long as my games play nice :)