OpenGL, laptop > stationary, qq

Laptop: Dell XPS M1530: Core 2 Duo T9300 (2.50GHz), 3582 MB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT 256MB (Running Vista)
Vs.
Stationary: Dell Precision T7400: Intel Quad-Core Xeon E5420 / 2.5 GHz, 3069 MB RAMO, Quadro FX 1700 512 MB (We've got 2 of theese one with vista and one with XP)


We're devoloping a couple of small demos for a touchscreen which is running 1920x1080. We're programming in python and are using pyglet which let's us write openGL commands. The thing that is surprising us is that the laptop is giving us a higher framerate then the stationary. Is this to be expected? Since we're looking to up our framerate is the right thing to do just throw away the Quadro FX 1700 and get a (or two) gaming cards and we'll be seeing improvements?

Atm we're trying to get about 60 semi transparent textures to be drawn @ 60 fps with 4xAA, the laptop can handle it but the stationary only gives us 40-50 fps.