Macbook Pro for electrical engineering student

I will be attending Iowa State University in the fall of 2010 to study electrical engineering, and I have already decided, thanks to all the help on this forum, that I will be getting a Macbook Pro. I do want to plan ahead of time for this purchase, so thats why I am asking now. I see that apple has now split the 15" pros into new divisions now, and now that leaves me with a new question. Will I need the dedicated graphics card and the integrated one for some applications that I would use as an electrical engineering student like MATLAB? or will the base model be just fine with only the integrated card. I'm sure the processor speed will be sufficient. And I also may play games from time to time, and I am considering the Sims 3, if that makes any difference. Thanks to all that can help!

Get the dedicated card if you are going to be playing games.

I am running Matlab perfectly fine on my 2.4GHz Black Macbook. The base model should be fine for all the electrical engineering software that you'll be using.