A few things to consider. Any laptop that will run the graphics programs with the speed you desire will also do anything else you want it to very well. So get all the RAM they can cram into that thing. Video RAM isn't necessary but if it is offered and can be had for a reasonable amount, get it. Alienware and Falcon are two of the high end suppliers so if you can afford them, you can't go wrong. My experieces with hardware both at work and at home keep me as far away from gateway products as possible. So far in the last 1.5 years we have replaced 378 faulty power supplies in our gateway machines, where as the dells, had one HD bad out of the box and no other problems so far. Gateway sent us enough power supplies to replace all of our machines twice after we had about 6 go out in one day. In my mind this says they expect it to happen again, and it did.