if you going to use this laptop to do 3d work for most of the time,
you should get a workstation laptop eg: dell precision which having nvidia quadro graphic card (very expensive) or laptop with ATI Fire GL
you mention you are considering XPS, but XPS is also just a multimedia / entertainment laptop,
the graphic card inside (nvidia GT series) also more to gaming.
why don't just get DV6-6001TX like some other people here? instead of XPS ?
don't worry about Radeon card compatibility for 3dmax / maya, these issue are happen very long time ago.
personally i like this laptop so much, i am using this laptop 50% for work (graphic / video / little bit of blender) 50% for gaming / entertainment.
before that i am also consider return the laptop to HP because of i cant manual switching the graphic card
(i am forcing to use blender with intel graphic device, this should be happen to be same with maya and 3d studio max),
but after many consider i decide to keep it and pray everyday that hp will give me manual switching in near future. lol
haha the reason why I look to these models is because of the price range/budget constraint only. For solely work purposes, Ive a professional desktop at home already so thats ok. Just wanted a laptop as my work companion..when Im at the office I can just continue some of my personal work and then bring back and continue work on it on my home desktop..
Just my main concern is that I cant fully use 3dstudio max and/or Maya with this hp laptop and the hd3000 card