CAD Laptop needed asap

Ingleberry · 31 Mar 2011 at 08:43

Work taken me on-site more frequently this year so i need a capable cad laptop but have no idea what to buy, all i know is that it needs a quadro graphics card for cad software 4gb ram and quad core cpu at minimum.

Screen size and battery life not that important most sites i goto have a power point i can use and also have projector for demos.

I was told i can add quadro card to any laptop is this true what sort of expansion slot/port should i look out for and are such laptops available through ocuk?

Thanks, Ingleberry

Yamahahahahaha · 31 Mar 2011 at 12:00

What programs will you be running?
CAD programs can have all sorts of preferences on hardware.

lsg1r · 31 Mar 2011 at 16:01

Ingleberry said:
I was told i can add quadro card to any laptop is this true what sort of expansion slot/port should i look out for and are such laptops available through ocuk?

that's not true. You can't just add it lol.

Look at dell precsion (business section), hp elitebooks and lenovo thinkpad W range.

You've picked a bad time though as they're now refreshing the mobile quadro's (new are 1000M, 2000M etc)

Stupot_ · 31 Mar 2011 at 16:13

I really doubt you need something with a quadro. I'm going to assume you're using a 2d package (autocad, microstation etc). For working on construction drawings you'll be absolutely fine with a standard £500 laptop. I take it work is paying? In which case tell them you need a £2000 monster

Ingleberry · 31 Mar 2011 at 18:24

lsg1r said:
that's not true. You can't just add it lol.

Look at dell precsion (business section), hp elitebooks and lenovo thinkpad W range.

You've picked a bad time though as they're now refreshing the mobile quadro's (new are 1000M, 2000M etc)

Damn i thought they were add-in cards guess :confused:

I mostly use solidworks and cnc machining is also heavily partnered with it, the difference between my quadro desktop without the gpu makes little difference until running simulations ect then kicks its square in the balls.

where can i find some info on these new mobile quadros please

lsg1r · 1 Apr 2011 at 01:54

Quadro are basically slightly redesigned geforce gpu's so are basically like any extra gpu on a laptop.

More on quadro stuff is here, you want mobile workstation bits. There should be some links to workstations from there too.

You've also got ATI/AMD firepro (which I think is slightly faster in solidworks) but I'd personally go quadro as it seems to have slightly better support.

Now I don't do a lot of simulations in solidworks but if it's using cuda you may get away with a good geforce, I'd just check it out to be certain as it could save you a lot of money lol.

sicknote · 1 Apr 2011 at 07:06

I have a Dell Precision with a Quadro FX1700M. I use ProE, Solidworks, Autocad and 3DS Max and have never had one problem with it.

Don't buy a laptop for CAD with a gaming card in it, especially if it is for your work.

Ingleberry · 1 Apr 2011 at 08:51

lsg1r said:
Quadro are basically slightly redesigned geforce gpu's so are basically like any extra gpu on a laptop.

More on quadro stuff is here, you want mobile workstation bits. There should be some links to workstations from there too.

You've also got ATI/AMD firepro (which I think is slightly faster in solidworks) but I'd personally go quadro as it seems to have slightly better support.

Now I don't do a lot of simulations in solidworks but if it's using cuda you may get away with a good geforce, I'd just check it out to be certain as it could save you a lot of money lol.

Thanks we have both Firepro and Quadro in the office for my work Firepro is unsuitable also not listed as supported by some other software i use.

I heard you can make normal geforce card work like quadro with drivers is that true?

Ingleberry · 1 Apr 2011 at 08:52

sicknote said:
I have a Dell Precision with a Quadro FX1700M. I use ProE, Solidworks, Autocad and 3DS Max and have never had one problem with it.

Don't buy a laptop for CAD with a gaming card in it, especially if it is for your work.

whats the performance difference between older FX series and new Fermi series of Quadro like 2000, 3000 ect?

Yamahahahahaha · 1 Apr 2011 at 10:55

Ingleberry said:
I heard you can make normal geforce card work like quadro with drivers is that true?

I believe the cards have different firmware and driver optimisations for CAD-orientated applications.
If you look up any review testing them vs. standard cards, they utterly obliterate them: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quadro-fx-4800,2258-10.html

Ingleberry said:
whats the performance difference between older FX series and new Fermi series of Quadro like 2000, 3000 ect?

Looking at this page: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/page/quadrofx_go.html
I would say the performance on all the Mid-range and High-end cards would be at least double.
The Ultra high-end card has significantly more RAM than it's predecessor.

Ingleberry · 1 Apr 2011 at 11:50

ahh cool i can only find old articles with very little snippets relating to current series;

i have budget of £2500 for laptop but if i can save some money it look good to the boss

lsg1r · 1 Apr 2011 at 18:55

in regards to the performance, it generally goes up one step each generation. Ie top tier last year is now one step down from top tier etc. iirc fx1700 is 2 generations old so it's going to be a fair bit slower than new stuff plus it won't have dx10 etc.

You can't make a geforce a quadro, although on the desktop (not sure about laptops) you could change a registry entry to use the quadro only features, didn't actually improve performance outside of the usual program optimisations and a quadro was ALWAYS a better card for CAD software due to the way it's optimised.

As to £2500, I'd wait as long as you can as I'm sure dell has some updates coming very soon and I'd suspect the precisions are on that list.