HD5850 or 3100m for NX6 and Solidworks

[angrybacon]

I'm looking at laptops for college. My school is offering a Thinkpad with a Nvidia NVS 3100m, but I could get a HP ENVY with a ATI HD5850 for a similar price. I need this to be a desktop replacement that would work for both CAD and gaming. I know the 5850 will work great for gaming and the 3100m probably won't. However, even though the 3100m is a workstation card I can't imagine it would perform better than the HD5850 with how wimpy the NVS 3100m seems to be in straight horsepower. Any opinions or recommendations for a laptop in the $1800 price range?

 

[alpha_c]

Gaming and CAD don't really mix. The cards for gaming are optimized for performance while the ones optimized for CAD are designed to be accurate (less aliasing).

I would say to look at the Dell Precision or Lenovo W series :
Dell mobile Precision website
Lenovo Thinkpad W series website

I haven't used the HP Elitebook workstations but you can have a look at them:
HP Elitebook

You didn't specify if you were doing 2D or 3D CAD. 3D CAD heavily prefers a Quadro or Firepro/FireGL card while 2D doesn't require much (NVS is for 2D applications, so it isn't very good for gaming).

 

[angrybacon]

Best answer selected by angrybacon.