If you use 1700 polies for interesting details then this should not be a problem at all. Just do a few LOD stages of the model. If you did that then the 1700 poly version will only appear when you come very close to it.

Current games and demos often have up to 500,000 polygons per scene. So you can use some detailled objects today. But better use the polygons wise and don't spend them for things that could have been done with a texture as well.