CAD laptop help

[Munchskull]

I have been wanting a CAD laptop for quite some time. Sadly they have been out of my price range. My dad who is an hp employee has access to a deal half of on this exactlaptop. My biggest concern is the lack of video ram. I would want it to last me 3 to 4 years for solidworks and HSMworks. Is it worth it or should I continue saving for a workstation?

[Chris_Ely]

I would not be as concerned with the 2GB of VRAM as I would be about the 8GB of system RAM. 2GB VRAM should be fine for anything done in FRC. 8GB of system RAM is the bare minimum that I would put in any computer now days. My laptop has 16GB, and I use around 8GB with just Chrome open. A workstation might give you a better experience with CAD because of its workstation GPU (mainly better drivers), but normal "gaming" GPUs will work fine.

BTW, your link is missing the : in the http://

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Chris_Ely

I would not be as concerned with the 2GB of VRAM as I would be about the 8GB of system RAM. 2GB VRAM should be fine for anything done in FRC. 8GB of system RAM is the bare minimum that I would put in any computer now days. My laptop has 16GB, and I use around 8GB with just Chrome open. A workstation might give you a better experience with CAD because of its workstation GPU (mainly better drivers), but normal "gaming" GPUs will work fine.

BTW, your link is missing the : in the http://

Thanks for the feed back. I think I will get this then and them purchase more ram.

[Chris_Ely]

Originally Posted by Munchskull

Thanks for the feed back. I think I will get this then and them purchase more ram.

Check to make sure that it has the ability to add more RAM. The specs say "onboard" which might mean that it is soldered to the motherboard.

[Munchskull]

Originally Posted by Chris_Ely

Check to make sure that it has the ability to add more RAM. The specs say "onboard" which might mean that it is soldered to the motherboard.

Looks like it is.

[frcguy]

Here is a related thread I started a while back on this subject.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=140733

It has some info on what to look for in a laptop.

[sanddrag]

That's a pretty decent spec as-is, especially if you can grab one for half the price. I wouldn't hesitate to do CAD/CAM on that machine. But, if you're looking for it to last you for about 3-4 years out, you'll definitely want to get something that either comes with 16GB of RAM or has an open slot to throw in another 8. On the graphics side, if you're running HSM, you'll want to get something with a pretty high spec. There's a lot of new cool stuff coming out in HSM in the next few years, and you'll want to be ready for it hardware-wise.

If you really want something top-tier and you have the budget for it, you may want to look into real mobile workstations such as those from the HP ZBook line. Here is one example, the ZBook 15 G3.

To give you a frame of reference, we run Autodesk Inventor Professional 2016 and HSM Professional 2016 quite well on HP Z230 Small Form Factor workstations with Xeon E3-1241v3 processors, 16GB DDR3, Quadro K620 2GB cards, and 256GB Z-turbo drive PCIe SSDs. We run at 2560x1440, which about 77% more pixels than 1920x1080. There are a few instances in which graphics could be just a bit better, but for most all of our purposes, these machines serve us quite well, without totally breaking the bank.

Now if you go 4K on your screen (which I'm not a fan of), that's a whole other story, and you'll want the absolute highest spec graphics card you can find.

[frcguy]

Originally Posted by Chris_Ely

A workstation might give you a better experience with CAD because of its workstation GPU (mainly better drivers), but normal "gaming" GPUs will work fine.

Just a note on this. Through my experience, I have a reasonably high-powered gaming desktop that is the same spec as our CAD desktop workstation for the team except for the graphics card. In my computer I have an AMD R9 380X, a current generation gaming card, but our CAD workstation has a Nvidia Quadro 400, a workstation card from around four years ago. Based on the SolidWorks performance test, the computer with the older workstation graphics card scores higher. I am fairly certain this has something to do with the available certified drivers, letting SolidWorks use all the functions of the graphics card, as opposed to the generic gaming card drivers, which behaves just like any old graphics card. I can't say much for actual usability, as my experience with both computers has been limited, but that's what the benchmarks say.

Our CAD laptop we have, an Asus model with an Nvidia GTX mobile card, does all right in SolidWorks, however, we need to do a bigger assembly or simulation we move up to the desktop.

Just my experience with the subject.