Recommend me - Laptop for CAD and high res graphics
A mate of my brother has asked for advice and thus I ask you lot ;)
He needs a laptop to do CAD stuffs and high res graphics work Cheaper the better thanks |
08:41pm 14/05/14 Permalink
What kind of CAD? Autocad? 3ds MAX? Blender? Do the programs make use of GPU acceleration, or are they purely CPU?
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09:18pm 14/05/14 Permalink
the quick answer is get a cheap used Quadro eg this one and chuck it in with a mini-itx case and components for all up around $500 and make the best of that
i would go into pandering to why a laptop unless he's going to be traveling and high res on a laptop screen are you for real and all the nuances these questions really deserve, but it looks like Whoop has that sorted woot Whoop |
09:34pm 14/05/14 Permalink
Has to be laptop as he'll be travelling.
Not entirely sure what sort of cad unfortunately. Got the info from my brother who isn't overly tech savvy |
10:15pm 14/05/14 Permalink
It really depends on whether he will be creating large assemblies with a lot of complicated componentry, that's what grinds things (at least with Autodesk Inventor). I use Toshiba Satellite specced with an i7, 8gig ram and a SSD drive and run quite complicated assemblies without any issue, so he doesn't have to go crazy but it does depend on his requirements, I mean if he's just going to be doing 2D Autocad then it doesn't even warrant a mention. RAM is king though so the more the better.
last edited by Ospi at 22:31:55 14/May/14 |
10:29pm 14/05/14 Permalink
no one expects that he's going to shoot straight into modelling some cray hyperloop cabin assemblies just for fun from some concept drawings
no matter how epic that would be anyway good reply above, both RAMs you're at least going to want to have enough to push up into as complexity increases without the scene paging to disk, which with a ssd might not even be much of an issue nowdays |
11:38pm 14/05/14 Permalink
- Budget range: what ballpark would he prefer to pay, and what is the maximum range of their budget. |
01:57am 15/05/14 Permalink
all of those things he want dont go together very well
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05:43am 15/05/14 Permalink
Gigabyte p34g v2. 1500 dollars from affordable laptops.com
Best specs and portability for a decent price around |
11:08am 15/05/14 Permalink
Agreed, they make 12" XPS these days too? I've got the Dell XPS 12" and I love it. It's the one that has the screen that can flip around to become more like a tablet. At first I thought it'd be flimsy but it feels quite sturdy when spinning the screen around. I mostly use it for programming but I've also done some light 3d work on it and it runs fine. Also play Civ 5 every now and then which works well with the touch screen. Battery life is great too, 6-8+ hours doing light stuff like text editing and web browsing. I usually get about 2.5 hours out of it playing Civ. |
11:57am 15/05/14 Permalink
Would consider a Surface Pro if I was going again though. What did you like about the Surface Pro over the XPS? |
12:12pm 15/05/14 Permalink
CAD on 12" screen would be hilarious. (Nah it would be really bad)
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12:16pm 15/05/14 Permalink
Gigabyte p34g v2. 1500 dollars from affordable laptops.comGigabyte P34G v2 specs That's a very well specced laptop, MSY are selling the P34GV2-860-4701S for $1849. (http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/notebook.pdf) I was trying to find it but couldn't remember where I had seen it before. I'd probably recommend this option now over my previous suggestions as it's the most well-rounded laptop of them all. It's a decent size but not too big, good resolution, enough HDD space, lightweight-ish (1.67kg), graphics, 8GB RAM etc. There seems to be a few sub-models so check the specs before you buy. I love Dell XPS, but the thought of lugging around a 15" laptop fills me with sadness. There are 13" XPS models available that are nice (1080p screen), but they're expensive. Dell XPS 13 The 128GB model ($1699) has just over 100GB usable and once Windows 8.1 is installed there's only like ~60GB left. That'll fill up darn fast. The 256GB model is $2099, that's $400 over the 128GB model and the only difference is the large SSD. All up, the Gigabyte model is better value for money spec wise. |
02:01pm 15/05/14 Permalink
pretty obvious form this thrad that trog doesnt lift.
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07:26pm 15/05/14 Permalink
I have a 13" Dell Latitute (over 2 years old) with AutoCad 2012 running on it. I have 8 gig of ram and a SSD and it runs like a f*****g champion. The laptop is really light making the whole thing easy to live with. When I am at the office, I use a docking station and the little lappy runs the dual 24" monitors without any issue in high res.
We just got our drafts person a 17" Dell that cost over 4K with 16gig of ram but that is way overkill in my experience. |
08:01pm 15/05/14 Permalink
having just built a PC for an architect, i can recommend only three things:
CPU, RAM and SSD. Those programs actually don't require a gaming card, the Intel HD graphics is actually quite satisfactory, the bottlenecks will happen elsewhere. Disk is perhaps the singlemost important thing in the requirements list. |
09:42pm 15/05/14 Permalink
Disk is perhaps the singlemost important thing in the requirements list. so often this is the case. |
06:25am 16/05/14 Permalink
Get a sweet 15" MacBook Pro Retina and do whatever you want on it.
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06:48am 16/05/14 Permalink
Just got an XPS 13 for work a few weeks ago, pretty sweet for a portable unit, not sure I'd want to be doing CAD on it though.
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11:39am 16/05/14 Permalink
I've got an MSI laptop, aside from the CPU hitting 100 degrees in summer while playing games, it runs 3ds max 2014 quite well.
http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GE60_0ND.html |
05:17pm 16/05/14 Permalink
What did you like about the Surface Pro over the XPS? Don't get me wrong, I love the s*** out of my XPS12. However as a convertible it edges more to the notebook side I find. The unit is noticeably heavier than a surface and its never quite in the comfort zone compared to our iPad when I use it as a tablet, its just that 10cm too awkward. It gets kind of hot in the hand. The touch on my unit occasionally dies unless I put it to sleep and wake it up. Fortunately that's rare, but it is annoying and never happens on our iPad. Not sure if hardware or software. It WORKS as a tablet .. but is just not ideal. Then again the flip-top lid that reverses the screen makes it an AWESOME plane media player or touch gaming device. Its well built too in the way that macs often are - feels nice, and little things like the screen movement are precise and smooth. But this year I'm travelling less so I need a convertible less. If I was buying a portable unit this year I'd want more touch less notebook, so the Surface feels like a better (and cheaper) bet. |
05:32pm 16/05/14 Permalink
does this guy have any plan in mind to try and get any work with these skills or is it just an interest thing?
reason i ask is because it's something i tried to pursue in the early 2000's but at the time the building boom of the 90's was waning and KarelCAD was difficult to engage with to get any kind of industry certs i'm not even on the pulse of what's going on with it more recently |
07:50pm 17/05/14 Permalink
He needs a laptop to do CAD stuffs and high res graphics work get him something s*** that's in his budget - he won't know the difference, and currently neither to you I'm not trying to be mean here, though if you're going to be a provider of advice for a system that is more a tool and than an entertainment center ( and the obligitory 2 or 3 tier ) support that comes along later ( for free ?), then you should be training this chap to slowly understand the importance of decent tools so that when the day comes that he has a decent budget he can thank you by making worth your while helping him out of a decent purchase. start with the system specs of the software he'll be using - and keep it practical ( and in your favour ) from there. I noticed you didn't list software titles... just 'CAD work'. last edited by koopz at 16:44:44 18/May/14 |
04:43pm 18/05/14 Permalink
