i use ae on my laptop. its specs :
sandybridge i7 2630m 2.0-2.9 quad, 12gb ddr3 1333 ram, 485m gpu, 2x500hdd.
im thinking of replacing one hdd with a ssd if it would benefit ae. basically i plant to put the o/s, programs, and scratch disks/media cache on the ssd and leave the raw files on the hdd. i will have output to either the hdd or an external hdd via usb 3.0.

would i see any benefits from this setup or would i be better served by just maxxing out my ram to 16gb?

I would upgrade graphics card, but in a laptop situation it's complicated; your CPU is good and you have enough RAM, upgrading to SSD will give you faster overall performance, depending on a drive could be a huge difference but not particularly in AE; it will load applications, including AE, in half time you used to see it, but performance wise AE it is more gpu and cpu hungry

there is no gpu i can upgrade as this is the fastest gpu available in a laptop and i whink it is equal to a slightly underclocked 560 desktop.

Is your laptop a Sager or Clevo? What version AE? How is the laptop handling AE? I think there is a 560M released although not sure if performance better than 485M.

Is your laptop a Sager or Clevo? What version AE? How is the laptop handling AE? I think there is a 560M released although not sure if performance better than 485M.

a sager is a clevo. clevo is the manufacturer and sager is the reseller. and yes it is. i am using cs5, so far it is handling it ok but when i had a short video sequence of some 50 photos flying around in 3d space the render took 2.5 hours, and this is for a 720p 3min clip!
while rendering i was checking cpu and gpu usage and they were both very low. it seemed that something was bottlenecking it.
the 485m is ~150% the speed of a 560m.

I was aware sager=clevo, just wondered if that's the brand(s) you had.

I am looking into similar with i7990x/ 485M/ 3 hard discs but have seen concerns over the heat with combination of 485M and i7's. A 460M was more preferred but in Aus. that combination is now superseded.

I'm working in HDV with cs3 with poss future cs5.

Hopefully someone may have the above combination and can shed light on the performance.

I was aware sager=clevo, just wondered if that's the brand(s) you had.

I am looking into similar with i7990x/ 485M/ 3 hard discs but have seen concerns over the heat with combination of 485M and i7's. A 460M was more preferred but in Aus. that combination is now superseded.

I'm working in HDV with cs3 with poss future cs5.

Hopefully someone may have the above combination and can shed light on the performance.

ah the sager 7292. from what ive read in the forums and from what i know of sagers legendary performance, there are zero heat issues with that machine even on 485m sli.
its bulky and has pathetic battery life but im sure you know that. it is basically a mobile workstation.