Gaming and 3-D rendering laptop

Hello and welcome to the forums
They will give you roughly the same performance(the desktop version may turn out to be a little faster but it generates more heat along with less battery life)
As for GPU,what are the exact models ?

thanx for responding - appreciate the insights. am looking at 17" screen or more. Options I have seen include Nvidia 460 or 485 ?(wait for 580?) and the AMD 5870, 6870. 3D rendering will be major use but would like to be comfortable with gaming performance. AM willing to invest ~$2500 US and would like to leave myself reasonably functional for 3-4 years, knowing that I can never truly future-proof myself. thanx again for taking the time dweeb

Well,Sandy bridge notebooks aren't available anymore for shipping.You have to wait till April.
As for VGA,well GTX 580 isn't out yet but if it follows the other 5xxM models,then it won't be much faster than GTX 485M(It could be even slower),but that's a guess.
Currently GTX 485M>HD 6970M>GTX 470M>HD 5870M