Honestly, if you're looking at professional applications and not gaming, you should be looking at mobile workstations. The GPU alone in those will make a large impact on performance.
An old coworker of mine had great luck at
http://xicomputer.com which I've found has a great reputation in the Engineering field for highly configurable systems. Get something with a mobile Quadro card. It'll make a huge difference.
Note: I've been a CAD Admin for quite a while, so I may be a bit biased to the pro cards, but for good reason.