Macbook Pro for an industrial designer

[Two|Bit]

I'm an industrial design student and I'm looking at getting a mac soon. I'm interested in the macbook pros since they have dedicated video memory and i need to use programs like photoshop, illustrator and solidworks. Maybe ill even use bootcamp to fire up some games every once in awhile, but this might not happen.

i know the new macbook pros base models have 256 mb of video memory and this should be sufficient for those programs. I'm just wondering if i should go to the step up for the extra $500 since it has double the memory and might increase the life of the laptop. It also has more harddrive space and a 0.1 ghz increase on the proc.

i've looked for performance to cost ratios and haven't really found any. should i go for the mid-range model?

[Force Flow]

System RAM would help more than video memory or a 0.1GHz increase.

How much RAM does it come with?