For many applications, that may well be true (although I'd like to see a citation, myself). There's one application for which it most definitely is *not* true, though, and that's *games* (which is kind of important here, considering that's what the OP is building his machine for). The graphics hardware in a laptop will not and *can* not match a desktop graphics card--how could it, when the desktop graphics card might pull 250W at full load and the power budget for the entire laptop is half that?