From desktop, to laptop.

[R e m o v e d]

Well I'm on my way out the door now, but I will say that I would greatly suspect the CPU in your desktop to be bottlenecking the rest of the system..........

The laptop would be a faster CPU, but I'm hesitant to reccomend that GPU on a 1080p screen..... only your highest end laptop GPUs are going to do well at that resolution....... of course it all depends on the game syou play and your settings...

The CPU in that laptop would easily match the one in the desktop. The graphics chips performance would vary depending the app, but I'd say that the laptop would be either very close or even better.

While there will never be an exact "replacement" for a Desktop in terms of gaming laptops; that one you listed there is pretty darn good. The GPU might be a bit weaksauce (isn't that expected though?) and its a shame the clock on the i7 is only 1.6GHz.

Still, darn good laptop.

Both are good laptops. The G73 has good cooling to boot, i know, i own one of these babies. The MR5870 is the 2nd most powerful notebook GPU behind the GTX480M which will be available shortly. The GTX360M is also a decent one for 1080p.

If you want a comparison with desktop GPUs, the 5870 is the equivalent of an HD5770 with lower clocks.

If you live in the US, you can oder from xotic PC or gentech. They can customize the notebook for you to some extent, like adding a more powerful CPU, better thermal paste etc.

Now for your questions:

The CPU is quite decent for GW, no worries there. I wouldn't try to overclock the 720qm though. There's a thread about that on notebookreview in the asus forums. The reasons why overclocking the notebook i7s doesn't give that much of a performance boost are a bit technical so i won't explain them there, but bottom line is the 920xm is the only one that the guys at notebookreview have successfully overclocked with a gain in performance.

Anti-virus: avast 5 or microsoft security essentials.

Other laptops: look at the sager np8690 (or the clevo model it is built upon which i always forget for some reason), the MSI GX640 and GX740.

If you don't need blu-ray on your notebook, there are cheaper models of the G51 and G73 which have the same specs w/o the blu-ray. If you're willing to wait, the G73Jw and G53 will be out this fall. We don't know what GPU will be in the G73Jw yet, but it will be a nVidia chip and won't be the GTX480M, the G53 should end up with a 460M.

One more thing, don't expect long battery life in a gaming notebook. I can get around 3 hours on my G73, but i have to manually downclock the GPU in order to have that much battery life. With no tweaks, expect battery life to be ~1:30 or lower when not gaming.

EDIT: In case you're thinking of going for a notebook with a i7 920xm, you should know that if you ever overclock the CPU you will probably fry the notebook without additional cooling.

EDIT2: The same goes for any notebook i7s with a large enough overclock.

[R e m o v e d]

It certainly is interesting looking. And great specs.

The G73/G51, both MSI laptops and clevo (in general) are considered to have great prices for their hardware. Sony (with the exceptions of a few models) and Alienware have a reputation of being overpriced.

As far as processors go, clock speeds aren't everything, newer hardware tends to perform better than older one to an extent (clock speeds still matter after all ). The 1.6GHz may cause some bottlenecks though depending on the program but so far i haven't encountered one.

If you plan on doing video editing, you will probably benefit from a 840qm which replaces the older 820qm model but doing so will add considerably to the price. You could always buy the notebook and the CPU separately and install it yourself. Doing will void most warranties though so i'd be careful.

You can also post on the what notebook should i buy on notebookreview: http://forum.notebookreview.com/what...-should-i-buy/ Just be sure to read the sticky and fill in the form, the guys there are helpful and you will have more suggestions.

EDIT: Whatever notebook you buy, try to get one with a GPU with GDDR5, there are still some GPUs with GDDR3 around so check carefully.

[R e m o v e d]

yep, $300 for a $50 HDD - I believe that series allows you to install a second hard drive if you wish - so I'd buy my own and walk away with $350 if I were you.

Nothing, except possibly manufacturer. I'd hazard a guess that the former is a bog-standard Realtek NIC, but they're both the same thang.

The atheros wireless card that comes with the notebook, yep it's an atheros AR9285 doesn't have as good a reception as the intel 6200 and also less bandwidth while on a n network. Nothing to worry about, but it's about right for the price difference between the 2 wireless cards.

-A1: blu-ray additional 500GB, backpack and gaming mouse (the HP voodoo mouse rebranded for asus)

-A2: Same as A1 minus blu-ray

-X1: no blu-ray, only 1 HDD and no backpack or mouse

EDIT: Just tought i'd mention that i own a G73Jh-A2, that's why i know so much about it .

Atheros? Sheesh, who installs Atheros?

(ok, ok - I was wrong ...again)

I agree on that statement, i don't have much love for atheros especially due to their driver support which is non-existant.

You'd be surprised, they come often enough in notebooks, i know from the tech at my university because we have problems with commercial wireless cisco access points and certain atheros cards. Since the problem was serious enough to warrant the tech department to do something about it, i'm guessing that it's not only asus that uses them.

As a rule of thumb, if it's an asus notebook it will be either intel or atheros.