I just had a thought graphics-wise: My laptop has a 9700M GT on board and it handles Dragon Age pretty well, considering. There's a comparison of benchmark scores for notebook graphics cards
here.
If (like me) you don't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of current graphics cards, a few notes are:
Important note for nVidia cards: GS
The numbering scheme for chipsets is obfuscatory. For example: in nVidia, (X)800 > (X+1)600. In ATI, 4670 > 3870 > 4650.
In short: It's hell out there. If you check the benchmark page I linked to and buy something with a card from the top 40 on the list, you'll probably get a decent performer.
Edit: Just read an above post properly. Someone else already referred you to notebookcheck.net, and apparently it has more information than I knew about. Ho hum.