Have been following the topic for a while now.
Registered because I wanted to share a few thoughts.

overall it seems that the lenovo y500 will have 650m in SLI.

Performance-wise, we can compare the 560m-560m SLi ratio and draw some theoretical conclusions:
560M - 2051(3dmark 11)
560M SLI - 3997(3dmark 11)

About 195% improvement, however it only works when both cards are on the same board.
The ultrabay slot might have bandwidth issues and a general bottleneck but overall I expect it to perform at about 170-180% of the GT650m. (Should at the same level as GTX670MX but will probably get a major drop on the clocks so it will be between 580m and 670mx.)
Expect it to burn your lap and make a gash in your wallet.

Regarding the price.
I'm obviously speculating, but if you look at the market, you will see that there is a pretty clear price-performance ratio in most of the mass produced laptops (not including alienware, eos, deviltech etc...).
A 15" (a pretty compact one at that) gaming laptop with 1080p panel, an I7QM and an SLI GPU (Two chips with individual cooling cost more than a single beefy one) should go for about 1050$ for the basic build with the ultrabay card costing additional 250$.

MSI GX60 - Radeon 7970m 1300$
I found more on newegg but all of them are way above the 1.3k mark.

I just hope they do some initial discount and go for 1k-1.1k, but this is the LOWEST price I can expect.

I was hoping to pick it up for 950$ without the ultrabay but it seems pretty delusional considering the design and demand.
>.<

This post has been edited by alexsupreme: Oct 18 2012, 07:48 PM

You might want to look up your definition of "cheaper".

Since no updates were to be found regarding the y500 I started looking for laptops with similar performance and possibly upgradeable.
I stumbled upon the Sager NP9130 (Clevo p131em1) which offers a very nice basic build, fully customizable and MXM 3.0b compatible for less than 1200$. (More technical data)
It's a bit heftier than y580 but the PSU is only 120W and the basic build comes with 670m GPU which with some tinkering could be upgraded in a couple of years to another 75w TDP GPU.
It is much easier to disassemble, repair and modify than everything I've seen from lenovo so far and is assembled on demand.

Lenovo would have to show me something remarkable to sway away from the clevo.
I have really hard time believing that Y500 with the dual GPU setup could drop below 1200$ or avoid any heating issues.

And to think that I was so hyped a few weeks ago U__U...
Well, I still wish to see what they come up with.
I'm a huge fan of lenovo laptops and I just hope that they wont mess up their entrance to the real gaming laptops market.

the real potential shines if you manage to connect a full size card through that port and make it run even without SLI.
I agree with you regarding the SLI. It's not supposed to be upgradable, but the DIY potential is huge.

Externally. An eGPU solution.
No cooling problems and very upgradeable.

Prices are available
Although 1500$+ for a so-so gaming laptop is a huge letdown.
Unless they drop the prices, this line-up might be really bad for them.