Buying laptop

[tue98161]

I'm looking a laptop that would be good for using autoCAD, Revit, Solidworks, and Mathcad, etc, as well as being a good all around laptop that a college student uses to study with.

I've heard things like processing speed, ability to render well (for CAD programs), and CPU size.

So, two questions: 1) is it feasible that a Bootcamp-equipped Mac can run these programs? Ideally, I'd like to buy that; and if not, 2) what is the best non-Mac laptop for the job? Does anyone know any good laptops for these purposes?

Thanks!

- Dan from Philadelphia

 

[JMirisola]

Yes, you can bootcamp and run CAD packages, but you'll be hard pressed to get tech support. As for Windows laptops, you need to make sure you use a graphics card meant for CAD, not gaming. For SolidWorks, you can go to their website and see their system requirements. I'm sure you can do that for other CAD packages as well.
As for the everyday student side of things, any mobile workstation will be just fine for that.

Jeff Mirisola
My Blog

 

[PatCouture]

Hi!

Depending on your budget, I would choose between Dell, Lenovo and Hp in that order, they all have "Mobile Workstation" that you should look into such as the M4700 for Dell, the W530 for Lenovo and the 8560W with HP. The entry level Nvidia Quadro 1000m should be enough for most task. I don't know yet if the AMD Firepro 4000 is proven enough. Those cards would be for 15" laptop that depending on the options you choose can still have a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 which I recommend. I don't know for the other softwares but SolidWorks is very dependent on the speed of your CPU so it's a place where you should not compromise and get faster clock speed instead of more cores. Another make that I'm currently using is Eurocom which offer good hardware for a decent price but I find the laptop is not as well built as with the major OEMs.

I've never used Macs so I can't comment on those.

Happy shopping!

Patrick

 

[NickE]

you might want to go used... while there are great benefits to the i5/i7 processors, the C2D processor is relatively quick, and workstation class computers are available at massive discounts. I recently purchased a Dell M6400 to use as my laptop for engineering consulting. It's equipped with a 2.96GHz C2D, 12GB RAM, Quadro Video Card, two drive bays that will run RAID 0 or 1. It is not any slower than my desktop machine, Dell XPS8300, w/ i5@3.1GHz, and really cheap nvidia card. The laptop cost $450, an additional 8GB of ram was $50, Win7pro was another $150. So for around 700$ I have a laptop that's almost equivalent to my desktop machine.

Note: (the desktop machine was built in order to do non-linear video and audio editing, the laptop would show a marked speed reduction for these tasks, more cores do help with these types of computations, SW in particular doesn't benefit from the additional cores as much.)

Nick

 

[DRWeig]

My personal experience: In the Intel world, the i7-3930(k or x) gives significantly better performance than the previous models, basically because of the clock speeds it can handle. There are Xeons and other workstation-class processors that can blow the i7s away, but my budget doesn't stretch that far. A good graphics card that takes the rendering load away from the CPU always helps. JMirasola's comment about the gaming cards is a good one.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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[MiketheEngineer]

That all said and good info there - BUY as much memory as you can afford - like 16 mg and the best graphics card you can find.

 

[PatCouture]

The best graphic card will help but if you get a great graphic card with a poor cpu you will never have the chance to reach the potential of the GPU so start with the CPU then RAM then the GPU.

Patrick

 

[mjcole]

Dan,

I'll provide you with tech support. Even when I worked at a Reseller I always gave the best recommendations I could to the Mac users who called me the other AEs usually just hung up the phone and I ended up taking their call and solving their issues.

The following link shows supported systems and graphics cards certified to work with solidworks.
I'd Recommend an ATI Fire Pro. or if NVidia you'll want a Quadro FX card.

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/hardware.html

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html

Of course they won't list Macs yet but running Parallels or Boot Camp should get you going smoothly just try to avoid telling your VAR your on a Mac.

Gaming Cards are not a serious show stopper but I would avoid the ones you'll typically find at a chain store e.g. GeForce. I used one on my home system and had no issues with it aside from the no Real View capabilities.

You should never run a graphics board with higher memory than your RAM it will cut into the amount available to your PC

UGNX runs natively on Mac so you may want to check their software out.

When Looking at Laptops make sure they don't come with a lot of extra processes in the Task Manager CTRL+Shift+Esc will launch it. I used an HP once with a HPQToaster.exe process which I'm still curious of.
I'm trying to run CAD not burn a bagel.

Are you studying at the school that does the engineering Egg Drop protection competition? "UPenn" I think.


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