Ok you have to consider my situation first (i know desktop is better), being in the military and deploying all the fkin time its kinda hard for me to buy a 5000 dollar desktop, use it for a year maybe, then deploy and come back to it probably beat up, or destroyed by rats in storage.

so in my situation, should i just buy a killer laptop and bring it with me to iraq or on the boat, or should i go with the desktop?

Why not buy a cheaper desktop. By the time you get back anyways it'll be outdated and I'm sure you'll want to update it to bring it up to top class standards again.

Look at the game you play the most, then base a machine around the recommended components or maybe a step above. I doubt there's any reason to go SLI or X-fire just yet since very few games actually use it properly. Even less reason to get a dual core CPU or even a 64-bit CPU for that matter.

In a year's time then it'll probably be better to get dual-core or 64-bit and SLI or X-fire.

I'm guessing you're going to be too busy to really enjoy your laptop and satellite connections suck for online gaming. So unless you play a lot of offline games I wouldn't go with the laptop. Also getting a laptop that can comfortably play today's games would mean a beefy machine that'll be bulky to transport.

DESKTOP!!!!!! Laptops sux for gaming. Plus its cheaper to upgrade a desktop and you can do most upgrades yourself with a lil help from www.newegg.com

yeah but if u read my original post gunklejay, i will deploy within a year of getting it. A Laptop just makes more sence for me to have, or until im stationed somewhere where i wont be shipped to iraq again.

DESKTOP!!!!!! Laptops sux for gaming. Plus its cheaper to upgrade a desktop and you can do most upgrades yourself with a lil help from www.newegg.com

I have XPS M170 and I know It can beat many desktops, specialy because I have 7800GTX in that laptop.

The only advantage a laptop has over a desktop is portability or mobility due to it's size. If you want a laptop to simply communicate with family when you are deployed, get a cheapo Celeron or maybe a Centrino processor for slightly more. However, if you want a laptop for gaming as well as communicating, an example of a good laptop to get for that is an HP ZV6000 or ZD8000 series - w/ a very fast processor and graphics with dedicated memory.

One thing to remember is, laptops and desktops become obsolete at the same rate. When that happens, a desktop is always easier to bring up to spec because of the wide array of standard parts available to PCs. Laptop never had that advantage.