Alienware 17x vs Asus G73JH-A2

Hello and welcome to the forums  
Well 2 HD 4870Ms perform better than 1 HD 5870M in gaming,but a 5870M can handle games fine too so it depends on the games and the resolution and also the settings that you want to play

Thank you for the reply. I will also be using this for vj work, mixing live camera feeds with video and sending it to a projection system, possibly even going to multiple projectors. Would that cause me to give preference to either GPU configuration? Thanks again.

Don't they offer those professional cards with external enclosures? Or is that just the ATI in a box for gaming?

I don't know.Haven't seen any external professional video cards, except those Matrox video controllers for working with multiple external screens.

If they both perform well enough for your needs, don't forget about power consumption. I haven't looked it up so I'm not sure, but I would guess that the 5870M would consume far less energy than the 4870X2M, which would give you some extra battery life.

Thanks to everyone for their advice! After researching, it looks like I should really consider building a desktop that would be dedicated to rendering and video editing, and just forget about the gaming aspect for now. I do think tho that the HD 5870m is probably a wiser choice for a gaming laptop...
Thanks again.

Best answer selected by elseven.

Your advice pointed me in the right direction to figure out what was the most important to me - editing video and getting into 3d animation. I ended up putting together a desktop system with an Nvidia FX1800 card for well below what I would have had to pay for a laptop. I'll give up the easy transport of a laptop for the horsepower of my new system.
Thanks again.

I am happy that my post was helpful.Hope you 're happy with your new system.I really think that the most important part of a purchase is identifying your needs.If you ever need someone to share views about something computing-related, please mail me.