Ram : 16 / 32 / 64 ??

[Midgardsormr]

unless you WANT to build a graphics workstation
then 128 gig ram and 2 or 4 xenon CPU's and 4 nvidia cards

Um... That's a bit of overkill. And by a bit I mean a ton. I'm a professional vfx compositor. My workstation is 1 CPU, a single nVidia Quadro, and 64 GB. The machine you've described is what you'd want for very high-resolution simulation.

My machine at home is 16GB, and it occasionally feels a little tight. However, RAM is the cheapest upgrade you can make, and the price only goes down. I'd say start with 16, but make it two 8 GB sticks. I have four 4GB DIMMs and eight slots; if I want to go to 64GB, it will be very costly. It will be bit a more expensive in the short term, but in the long run you'll be able to upgrade more easily. I would definitely spring for a motherboard that can handle up to 64.

I'm not sure you need the FirePro/Quadro card unless you're planning some serious 3d work. Their primary advantage is their ability to handle continuous throughput with fewer errors. For Photoshop, After Effects, and light 3d, a gaming-quality GPU with CUDA is sufficient. I recommend nVidia at the moment, even if you go with the pro card, because AMD has been lagging in the feature war. There are a lot of Mac Pro users right now bemoaning that they're locked in to AMD.

edit: I just saw you're talking notebooks. I'm not knowledgeable on the mobile side of things, so my advice might not hold up in that case.

[J.Edward]

I'd throw in one other thing about AMD-Radeon vs nVidia - sketchup likes nVidia and several other progs do as well so nVidia would be the better choice.
I love AMD as a company but compatibility is king.

I've read a number of tests that seemed to show that the Quadros were great at 3d [CAD modeling being a big one] but not as good on 2d, in these test.
In them, game cards seemed to perform better in 2d tests. Which was my thought process when deciding on a graphics card for the new computer.
Just a thought there. I got some additional feedback from my brother who does mechanical engineering for GE and uses a workstation at work with a Quadro.

[pcolin]

I guess, 16GB will be anough for what you want to do, but regarding the notebook you plan to bouy (or you bought) to goo deeply on same segment of component 32GB is now possible, since DDR4 16GB module exists.

BR