I currently have a laptop with a Core i7, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 64-bit and a Quadro 1000M. Will this be able to run battlefield 3? If not, how much would I need to spend on an upgrade to make it work?
It'll probably run it on low settings. If it doesn't then there isn't much you can do about it, you can't just upgrade laptop graphics cards like you can on a desktop.
Upgrading a laptop is very hard , the components are scarce and it's not like a desktop were you have an abundence of components to choose from. Is the Quartro 1000m an intergrated chip or a discrete card in a slot. Unfortunatly I have not seen a benchmark run with w Quartro 1000m for BF3 so there is no way to know if it will run the game without buying it and trying it out. What brand is the laptop and do they have upgrade options on the web site. If it was a discrete card and you could remove it then you could look for a video card to replace it. You are also very limited by the power supply as to what will work and very few options for upgrade.
If the discrete card is pluged into a slot on your laptop you can take it out and put another in but you have to go to the web site of the laptop to see if there are options and recomendations of cards there that can be put into that laptop. I would give the tech support a call because they can tell you outright what you can and can't do with that laptop.