Sounds like the video card is being overtaxed to me. I have a friend who also uses a rather expensive Alienware laptop for gaming, and it is currently on its fourth replacement video card. Fortunately for him, he took Alienware up on their warranty policy which means they have to spring for the cost of each new card, but I suspect the real problem is that the specified card for that laptop was not a good original design choice, and I daresay he'll be on number five graphics card soon...
Personally, my own laptop (Hewlett Packard Pavillion) won't run SH4, because it doesn't have graphics that support pixel 2.0 (despite it being brand new, and running Vista), but it runs SH3 just fine with everything on full throttle thanks to 2 gigs of RAM. Ironically enough though, it does run FSX with all the autogen scenery cranked up, which is another game (sorry simulator) that has some seriously high computing demands.
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