Nvidia Quadro NVS 160m and Graphics cards in general

I am strongly considering purchasing a Latitude e6400 for college this summer, and I've been doing some reading online. Business laptops seem to have the sturdiness, price and warranty support that I'm looking for, but the change in graphics card confuses me. Though I don't really have any choice in graphics card, I'd still like to understand how effective this particular card is.

1. I plan to be a math/science major, and forsee needing to use simple math and modeling programs. I'd also like to install a copy of 3DS Max 8 that I've had lying around for a while. As far as I understand, this card (Nvidia Quadro NVS 160m) should be fine with this program. Am I right?

2. Apparently, the e6400 and e6500 have different versions of this card? Can someone explain how exactly they are different, in laymans terms?

3. Apparently, this card's drivers are focused towards business software, making it worse for gaming than the equivalent consumer laptop graphics card. Can you explain what the drivers have to do with gaming, again in laymans terms? Can alternate drivers be installed with this card, to improve gaming ability?

4. What I'm getting at is that I'd also like to play some games on this laptop. I'm not really a hardcore gamer, but if I were to have my eye on a demanding game like, say, Supreme Commander, what could this card do for me? I found a benchmark test that said it couldn't handle such a game: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Computer-Games-on-Laptop-Graphic-Cards.13849.0.html
but I really don't want to believe it. Ultimately, I may abandon my gaming desires, at least until I have a desktop, but answers to my questions, and any other related feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

 

1) I'm not familiar with that software. I just did a quick google search and I think that the 160M should run it quite well.

2) The E6400 uses DDR2 memory while the E6500 uses DDR3 memory. The differences are pretty small and technical, but it translates to about a 25% performance increase in synthetic benchmarks - I don't have an E6500, so I can't give you real performance differences. But expect around 20%.

3) The optimization is pretty irrelevant. The stock Dell drivers are optimized toward CAD software and similar applications. You can, however, install modified GeForce drivers that optimize the card toward games performance. It's relatively easy. Your choice.

4) The Quadro 160M (both the E6400 and E6500) will run that game just fine. In fact, it bests even the "recommended" requirements.