There are affordable laptops with built in dedicated GPUs: check
www.lappylist.com Actually, the Intel HD 5500 is just a step below the nVidia 860M which is still quite a decent card. The Acer Aspire V3 has that so it could suit you, though the screen is smaller. When buying laptops it really really pays to do your research and read a lot of reviews.
http://www.reddit.com/r/SuggestALaptop/ can help you decide!
As far as EQ goes, the Intel HD 4600 is newish, from 2013. EQ's official recommended specs are for a GPU from 2006. This laptop may still struggle with newer zones, however. If you turned effects down to lower settings you may be fine. If I were limited to a $1000 budget, from the list on that site, I would pick... maybe the ASUS N550JK, because it has the i7, a GTX850M, 8gb ram, 15" IPS touch screen, and it's relatively thin. The Dell XPS with the HD 5500 gets 15 hours of battery life,
awesome, but has only a 128gb SSD... but you could probably shell out for more at checkout. Sub $600, I'd pick... maybe the Acer Aspire. The 5500 seems okay, it's on an i5, and it gets 7 hours battery.