The only thing is the Lenovo screen is only max res of 1366x768 vs 1920x1080, not sure how much that will affect the gaming experience.
...
Now I just found several reviews that say the 1366x768 res screen sucks for gaming.

With notebooks especially, it's always a balancing act. The larger the resolution, the more pixels, the harder it will be on the video card, and you have to balance resolution with screen-size. 1366x768 will look better on a 15.6" screen than on a 17" screen, with identical performance (fps-wise) because the GPU is pushing the same number of pixels. That said, 1920x1080 would also look better on a 15.6" screen than on a 17" screen, and to be honest I'm surprised at finding 15.6" models that do 1920x1080.

That said, yeah, if you can swing the dinero, go for the 1080.

How about these? I haven't done any reading on MSI laptops specifically, but the specs are there (identical other than screen size), and only a couple hundred bucks over the one you mentioned (and they're already 8GB RAM):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152... - 15.6" for $1150
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152... - 17.3" for $1100

JT,
kinda wanting a new one myself after all this talk - my 2-year-old ($750 back then) 17" Acer w/Radeon 5650 has been aging since... shoot, since later that year