I thought that the quad core processor might not be practical and changed the processor to a dual core with a higher clock speed.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-520M Dual Core processor (2.40GHz, 3MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz

Price has gone down to $1,609

I also spec'ed the Dell XPS 16 with the same specs and the i5-540M Dual Core 2.53GHz but the graphics card is ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 4670 – 1GB. Priced about the same.

Thoughts if this is a good idea?

Please help I am trying to purchase a laptop by next week.

Thanks in advance.

turbo-boost works well on these intels

quad core will give you better performance for renderings and photoshop when all cores are used

1.86x4 cores x2 (HT) equals 14.2 Ghz of through-put versus 2.4x2 cores x2 (HT) equals 9.6 Ghz of through-put

you won't suffer with the slower clock speed of the quad core when doing general work b/c when not running a single core, the core speed jumps to a respectable 3.2 Ghz

w/ respect to graphics cards --- read the forums of the software you intend to use most -- some programs fair better with either ATI or Nvidia --- and you don't want your go-to app's crashing more often than usual b/c they don't play well with the GPU drivers

also fyi, pro series cards are generally not worth the extra month unless you are using a program for which a specific driver has been written to optimize performance

I'd check out this one...

HP-dm4

Processor & Memory:
Intel® Core™ i5-430M Processor (2.26GHz), with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.53GHz
4GB DDR3 SDRAM (2 DIMM), User Upgradable to 8GB

Drives:
500GB (7,200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
SuperMulti 8x DVD±R/RW drive with Double Layer Support

Graphics & Video:
14" Diagonal High-Definition LED Display (1366 x 768)
512MB ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5450 Graphics

$799 bucks



...and then spend the remaining $1200 of your budget on a custom-built desktop that would destroy a $2000 laptop.

actually you can probably do better than the laptop I listed... but seriously look into the desktop combo if this is practical for your program.

thom yorke brings up a great point --- i'm in graduate school right now --- i actually bought a 1 year old used HP 8700 series mobile workstation form HP through their clearance center for $700, for an extra $50 they gave me a 3-year warranty --- how can you beat that!

then i built my workstation for about $1100 --- includes a i7-860 processor, 8 GB of DDR-3 RAM @ 1333 --- and an Nvidia GTX 275

i7-860 is a great chip, you have to do your research --- with intel processors, there is always a chip around $250-$300 that will give you 80%-90% of the performance of the $1000 chip ---- and when buying RAM and motherboard, you have to match the speeds and voltages of the components --- there is no reason to spend more on faster ram than your CPU or motherboard will support unless you are going to overclock properly

Thanks for the feedback!

@jmanganelli

You presented some good info on the processors and did some more research on the quad core vs the dual core. It looks like the quad core is worth it.

Do you think there is a huge difference between these two processors? It's a $200 difference.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-740QM Quad Core processor (1.73GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) w/Turbo Boost up to 2.93 GHz

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-840QM processor (1.86GHz, 8MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.2 GHz

@Thom Yorke

I would love to do that but I am actually studying abroad for a year so that means lots of travel and I can't be carrying around a desktop. The facilities I will be staying in do have powerful desktops, so thats why I am looking for something a little more portable but with some good power so I don't need to be using the desktops too often since theyre shared with other students.

Any other alternatives?

Also, what's everyone's take on those graphics cards? I know that the processor and RAM are more important, but do you think those cards can take rendering and Revit if needed?

If you are serious about rendering capabilities, I suggest the Lenovo (IBM) W510 workstation-class notebook. For the same price as all of the above, you get the following specs...

Intel Core i7 820QM
4GB RAM upgradable to 16GB (I know, it is intense)
500GB HDD and you can even get the W710 with RAIDED HDD
nVidia Quadro FX880M 1GB Video Adapter (workstation class graphics card with a BIOS and drivers optimized for rendering)- second to none

This laptop comes with an optional mobile broadband adapter, it has 2 USB 3.0 ports and a powered USB port. Also, you can get the W710ds, a dual-screen Thinkpad, but it comes at a price.

I highly suggest the above, Thinkpads have a stellar reputation in reliability, I personally have a 3 year old lenovo at the moment and I have had absolutely NO issues with it. As a matter of fact I ordered the W510 for first year architecture because I am absolutely certain it will run CAD for years to come.

By the way, I suggest you do not get the 820QM, benchmarks on many review sites show that the exponential increase in price from the 720QM offers little improvement in performance. Although it might seem enticing (the 820QM has 2Mb extra L2 cache), physical tests show it is not worth the money you pay. You're better off spending 200 bucks on 8GB of RAM.

Thanks for the recommendation Voltaire.

I've looked at every laptop possible, and did look at the Thinkpad W510.

You or someone else might be able to answer this for me, but on the graphics card benchmark list at notebookcheck.net, what would be the more important categories to score higher on, i.e. pixel shaders, core speed, memory speed, etc.

Here is the link:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

I ask this because according to the list, the Radeon HD 5650 is ranked higher than the Quadro FX 880M.

Here's the deal, the Radeon HD5650 has drivers optimized for running every-day applications such as videos and games, therefore any benchmark program you run on it will score higher. The thing with the FX880 is that it is a workstation class graphics card, which, as I stated earlier, is optimized for running CAD software through its BIOS and drivers.

The reason why websites such as notebookcheck.net run these benchmarks is to create some sort of common ground between all notebooks, and since we are no average consumer (professional consumers unfortunately are not considered by these websites), we do not fall into any particular category.

By the way, since colour calibration is extremely important for CAD users, you may opt to buy the 95% gamut full HD screen for the W510, it includes a color sensor which automatically fixes your colour spectrum for optimal viewing.

And to answer your question about what specifications to look at, you should look at core speeds and memory, because ultimately, rendering is about speed.

Are there any graphics cards comparable to a Quadro that are used by design professionals?

So is www.notebookcheck.net the best review/comparison sight going these days?

^miamiDC, i've heard of ATI firepro being another comparable workstation card. I think you are essentially paying for the software driver more than the hardware when you pony up for a workstation pro card.

Anyone have an idea what the next best graphics card would be for 3D programs besides the Quadro and Firepro. With my budget and specs, that only limits me to the Thinkpad W510.

besides revit, what software will you run?

Adobe Creative Suite, CAD, SketchUp, 3Dsmax

Never got into Rhino but that may change once I get back to school. I just want a laptop that is capable of running anything I need to, but it doesnt need to be flawless. I know its a laptop and not a desktop, and we will have some desktops available for use for heavy rendering.

Get the beast:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220695

So that ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is more than enough to handle my programs?

I think I'm hung up on this graphics card thing too much........

i was looking into this summer '07 and then '09 so my info is at least a year old

i would go with an nvidia card and you will most likely benefit from having a pro series card --- if a gamer card, the fastest and most RAM you are comfortable getting

read the forums for each of your primary applications and search threads on this topic

when i got mine, i specifically used the modo and rhino forums and i called mcneel --- this research made the choice obvious

now i also run revit and inventor with a gamer card and they work great

zen maker, that laptop has amaizing specs but is built as well as a mobile home, LOL

Any thoughts on this graphics card, with same specs, 8 GB RAM and i7 720QM?

NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M - 1GB Dedicated

It's a Sony Vaio F Series, but I seem to hear mixed reviews on Vaios.

Any thoughts?

search for the card in autodesk's, Area and Augi forums, as well as in relation to rhino or cad in general

you can also look on CGArchitect's web forums

maybe caddigest.com
or cadalyst.com
or tomshardware
or xbitlabs
or anantech
or a sketchup user forum

you may have more luck searching for reviews of the quadro fx series of mobile GPU's and then see if in the testing they compare it to your particular GPU --- since the sorts of reviews specifically about the 330M may not be geared toward CAD

these things are tricky and graphics cards are a bit like wine, vintage counts, there are good runs and bad runs with the silicon wafers --- and a little digging will reveal whether the manufacturer has locked out shader cores or made other adjustments b/c they had a bad batch, or whether a card is a particularly fine vintage, perhaps is basically a tuned-down version of the next card up the wrung, also of a fine vintage, and so tends to perform above expectations --- these sites will get you started ---- this is very much the case in the last 18 months with Nvidia's GTX 260/275/280/285 lines (stellar performance vs price) versus the newer 480 series, of which there were less quality cards available, at least initially, b/c of production issues, and some tweaking of parameters happened as a result

Thanks for those links, I've been searching forums and reading threads.

This is a thread I found for Revit, and it talks about everything from graphics cards to processor speed.

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=118133&highlight=laptop

Right now I am leaning towards the HP envy 14 noted above, with the Sony Vaio F series coming in a close second.

Now the only question I have is the importance of the screen resolution. The HP Envy 14 has a 14.5" diagonal HD+ HP Radiance Infinity LED Display (1600x900).

The gamut is said to be really nice, but is the resolution going to pose problems for the programs I want to run?

nice thread you found on augi

the screen resolution should be fine, though i think this is more a matter of personal preference

the fact that it has an LED screen is probably more significant --- it is a good thing

At this point I am going for the design of the laptop since I can get similar specs with the ones I've mentioned.

A great upside is that it's only an inch thick and weighs 5.2 lbs.

Last question (unless someone disagrees with my choice)

Do people agree with Voltaire that the difference between the 720QM and 820QM is not worth the extra 200 bucks?

Here are the specs for the processors:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-740QM Quad Core processor (1.73GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) w/Turbo Boost up to 2.93 GHz

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-840QM processor (1.86GHz, 8MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 3.2 GHz

@ jmanganelli


Thank you so much for all your help and your replies, I really appreciate it!

i think voltaire may be correct, though i think it is a close call --- and i could not find any good performance comparisons with a 5 minute look -- but there was a thread debating this very same issue

just like lumber is graded, when the silicon wafers are made for a given chip series, they are assessed as to how well they came out

sometimes the difference between chip a and chip b is only that a graded out as higher quality

the extra quality usually indicates that the chip may run cooler when performing at a given level, that it can take higher voltages, or that it is more stable or will last longer

so they tune down the settings for the lower rated chips and sell them as two different chips, though they share the same underlying architecture

the argument on the other thread in favor of going with the 840 is that it is a higher binned chip (graded out higher) so it may stay cooler and last longer under heavy load

mind you, none of this is guaranteed --- you could very well get a 740 and see near identical performance ---

given the data-intensive nature of CAD/BIM work, it may be that if there is a performance boost to be had going with the 840 over the 740, it is because of the larger L3 cache

but without seeing benchmarks, it is not possible to know

the other thing to consider is that laptops by their very nature run hot, so going with a cooler chip would probably extend the life of the laptop --- but again, without seeing benchmarks, it is not possible to know

so it is a very close call

this link may help. I'm not sure how important these benchmarks are or what they mean, but I'm guessing the Cinebench benchmarks are important:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

so it looks like the extra core speed does give close to 10% boost when multi-rendering --- so the extra may be worth it if you anticipate making big renderings where 10% of 20-40 hours is real savings

but if you keep most of your renderings under 2 hours, it is probably not worth it

came across this thread about the envy 14:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/490729-envy-14-potential-heat-problems.html

any thoughts?

does anyone have an hp envy 14 with quad core?

so it seems you are getting the picture --- it is a close call, there are pro's and con's to either processor and it comes down to a judgment decision on your part

in my experience, this is always the case with hardware once you get into the details --- it is all about shades and degrees, only rarely are there clearly obvious choices

this is usually true of software as well

Just so you know, the envy does not have an optical drive. I had a hand at using it the other day at Future Shop, and I absolutely detest their imitation of the MacBook touchpad, it is hard to use. Also, the envy runs extremely hot, making it very uncomfortable to type on; you definietly do not want to sit that thing on your lap.

thanks for the heads up. I've looked everywhere around here and can't find a place that sells the envys. The one thing with the Sony Vaio F series is it's graphics card is weaker than the Envy 14's.

The NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M - 1GB Dedicated vs 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5650 Graphics.

Anyone have a Sony Vaio F series and have any rendering or problems with Revit or Sketchup?

I'm kind of digging this deal right now:

"Lenovo.com has the IdeaPad Y560 notebook for $1,149 after $550 off coupon code USPY560722. Includes 15.6" display (1366x768), Intel Core i7-720QM quad-core processor, 8GB RAM, 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, ATI Radeon 5730 1GB graphics, 1-yr warranty.

$1,699 - $550 after coupon USPY560722 = $1,149 w/ free shipping."

^^^ I'm unable to find reviews on this particular lenovo model. Seems like pretty good specs, though.

Any thoughts?

I was also looking at Sony Vaio F series, it is a nice laptop but not many reviews, if anybody got one, please post here if it is good one for 3dmax rendering. The other laptop choice I was about to buy was Asus G73, it is a beast, but I don't think I need such a super graphics card for rendering work.

actually, about the beast of a graphics card, here is a thought

laptops are definitely not ideal for rendering as even a top of the line laptop CPU pales in comparison to a mid-level desktop CPU with respect to multi-threaded throughput

but...

there are now on the market several GPU based render solutions like octane render or linceo vr

http://linceovr.seac02.it/
http://refractivesoftware.com/

they are reasonably priced, supposedly very fast and it may be that GPU rendering on a laptop with a beast of a card is faster than CPU rendering even with the 980

anyone have experience with this?

a thread I foound on the i5 vs the i7 processors for autodesk programs

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=117851&highlight=dual+core

GPU rendering is definitly a thing of the future, but right now its probably too early to spend extra money for graphic card. For example, octane renderer is awesome but it doesn't support ATI graphic cards, only a number of Nvidia cards that come with CUDA. It is very limited now, maybe 1-2 years to go until it actually picks up into mainstream. Also, switching to another renderer just to save time for rendering is not very ideal for me, because most of the firms I freelance at, use Vray, but I heard chaosgroup is working on Vray RT GPU, so hopefully, they come up with it soon.

GPU rendering is amazing if you can get it to work, I think it will let you render with at least 42 cores (i7 is only 8). But more expensive graphic cards will render with even more cores, 256 cores even! Thats like a lightning fast rendering, really nice for animations too, no longer hours of waiting to render a single frame, it will render super fast. It is definitly a thing of the future, but don't buy graphic card for it just yet!

the vray issue is a great point in that in these times, might as well learn the de facto standard as it is more marketable

the nvidia cuda point is important, too -- i forgot about that

i think octane render is pretty far along though, there is a sample of it in this thread and it looks pretty impressive so far, though as you mentioned, it will be a couple years until it is full-featured

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=48218&page=1

look on page 2, the renderings by digger -- there is also discussion of the pluses and minuses

just saw this.....

if this is out now/soon, then you could have GPU rendering with a program that is a marketable skill --- maxwell render showing off a real timer render feature

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHyrROqAiZM

I've recently thought of substituting an i7 for an i5 to help with battery life and then add an SSD.

Good idea?

jmanganelli - looks like its CPU based, just like Vray RT, so you get only limited performance up to 8 cores (i7), I think Octane renderer works with GPU so you get at least 48 cores.

miami - it will not render faster with SSD, just windows will work faster.

I might just buy Quadro FX 1800 graphic card which supports CUDA, it is much cheaper now, like $400. So I can use Octane renderer, and slowly switch from Vray to Octane. I can make then renderings x10-x15 faster than vray. I was thinking about buy expensive laptop, but I might just upgrade my PC instead.

CUDA supported drives:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_gpus.html

Quadro FX 1800:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/PNY-Technologies-FX-1800-PCIEe-2/11084855?wmlspartner=GPA&sourceid=44444444440421869017

Actually, miamiDC, if you get i5 and graphic card which supports CUDA and buy Octane renderer, your laptop might render faster than the most expensive i-7 processor. It is getting very interesting.

bought the sony f series lappy. pretty slick stuff. and it has that cuda thing i've seen written here.

good luck guys

Now that I know about CUDA, I am leaning towards the Sony F series. I have had issues with ATI graphics in the past, so I am not sure whether to trust them.

Which would you pick if the specs were exactly the same except for the graphics card:

HP Envy 17

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850

Sony Vaio F12:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M


On the Benchmark List, the ATI is a Class 1, and the Nvidia is a Class 2

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

you have to research to verify, but it really comes down to software...for instance, if memory serves me correctly, maya actually excels with ATI cards whereas modo works better out of the box without tweaking settings with Nvidia cards

i think i've seen some promotional material from rhino saying they've put forth effort to make sure either ati or nvidia is fine, and that in fact it has become a coin flip

it used to be that sketchup and ati had issues but that was 3-4 years ago

so it really does seem to come down to optimizing your selection for the software you use

also keep in mind that apple is pretty meticulous about matching hardware when they spec out their workstations and they always have both ati and nvidia offerings

so if your primary app's say it is a toss up, then the decision is probably whichever gives you more cores or faster memory or more memory for the money

if your primary app has a preference, then you should get whatever that is

I've looked everywhere to find a list of approved or recommended GPUs for Autodesk, but they dont test out any of those GPUs. It seems that it's all about either Quadro or FirePro cards.

Anyone with these graphics cards have any input on Autodesk apps, Sketchup, Rhino, etc.?