To buy laptop with single 1080 or dual 1070?

usually there is a driver option to disable SLI.

For the view port render you should be able to check Border in the render settings. View the scene through the camera and press shift + numpad enter to make it the resolution you have set.

I think now this is finally implemented?

In Render tab, Performance. Below “Start Resolution”, you will see a drop-down menu with “Automatic” by default.

Blender from first links here: