Laptop suitable for Graphic Design

iRuisu · 13 Mar 2011 at 02:30

Hey,

I've got a friend looking for a laptop for when he goes off to college. It'll mostly be used for Graphic Design which would involve the use of such programs as Photoshop, Indesign, Gimp, Illustrator etc.

I know that it'll need a fast processor and a fair amount of ram but what sort of graphics card would be best?

This here is an option -
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-038-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat=

But I'm not entirely sure if it's gfx card would be suitable for graphic design as it was built for gaming purposes. But could it still run fine when designing?

His spending range is between £500-700 so If anyone knows of any good recommendations that would be fantastic!

Tudders · 13 Mar 2011 at 19:24

Hi there

not sure how much the student discount is but for those tasks hes probably best looking at the apple range, im sure he'd get a macbook for the upper end of the budget (may need to stretch a little more) but it would easily do those tasks.

If Apple ain't his thing i'd go with what you've linked to, it looks a nice spec for the price.

iRuisu · 14 Mar 2011 at 08:30

Thanks for the reply

Apple was considered but it's the fact that they over price their product for what you get. It's a shame that the one I linked to is now out of stock :/

joey1211 · 14 Mar 2011 at 08:34

I'd forget the graphics card and concentrate on the quality of the screen for colour accuracy. Unless he's hooking it up to an external monitor

Genome_UK · 14 Mar 2011 at 11:17

I'm a graphics designer and I just recently got myself a laptop to do some design and photo work on something other than my desktop rig (that's more designed for games, my actual work rig based at work is a LOT slower)

I just got an acer aspire 5742 that comes with an i5 450M and 4 gig DDR3 ram and just uses intel HD graphics. It works great for that sort of stuff. However if its going to be moved around a LOT then spend a little more and get something more rugged than the Acer. Its cheap for a reason. You dont need a high end graphics card unless your doing more 3d stuff. Graphics design (indesign, photoshop etc) is for the most part cpu and ram based. I think newer photoshop can take advantage of graphics cards for some things these days but they are not vital.

So my advice is get as good CPU and RAM as you can. Dont worry about the graphics card. However if you can wait a little bit get the next sandy bridge chips as there on board graphics is even better.

If your friend likes to play the odd game here and there the Intel HD can do it. I play TF2, killing floor, left 4 dead, morrowind, oblivion, Dawn of War and torchlight on it and it runs them very well if you turn the settings down where needed (but still using native resolution). The sandy bridge chips will have Intel HD 3000 which looks to be about twice as good.

There really is no advantage to macs for graphic design these days. I have 7 years of experience using MACs for design and the past 3 I have been on PC's instead. If anything my PC crashes less. I wouldn't recommend either over the other for such a task. As for price, PC gets you more for your money.

Just to add my actual work computer just has some crappy ATI x600 card in it and it does the job fine. Its the old CPU and ram that slow it down at times. The lap top i got is a lot faster.

Also when doing photo editing my laptop seems faster than my gaming rig because that, while having a decent graphics card, has an older CPU and RAM in it as well.

Hope my ramblings make sense or even help you.

iRuisu · 15 Mar 2011 at 12:03

Thanks for your reply!

I'm not entirely sure if my friend will be working with 3D graphics so yeah a graphics card may not be needed as I don't think he's much of a gamer.

I'll tell him about the acer aspire 5742 as it's a fairly reasonable priced laptop!

Genome_UK · 15 Mar 2011 at 15:47

it is but really take the build quality into consideration. Mines not going much further than the sofa on a regular basis so it should be fine but if you take it places a lot id invest a little more for a better build.

Also its not important to me because I use headphones if i'm bothered but it actually only has mono sound......was sort of surprised by that when I found out but not an issue for me regardless.