SW and Laptops 2

[djw2k3]

Hi there,

Does anyone run SW happily on a laptop - ie similar performance to a mid range workstation??

Anyone have any recomendations for a good manufacturer/brand?

I assume the main bottle neck in a laptop is the graphics card.

I see some are getting the 1 gig RAM mark with a reasonable CPU.

Dave

 

[MadMango]

Check out the Dell M50.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[jbknudsen]

Agreed, the Dell M50 is just about the only laptop that SW will run smoothly on. In most cases the user is not exhausting the ram or maxing out the processor on the laptop. It's my understanding, and personal experience, the video card is one of the major setbacks to running SW on a laptop. This includes running in the "software open gl" mode.

Jay

 

[djw2k3]

had a look at the M50 - looks real nice,

I think alot of peaople would agree with u jay Re video card power.

IMHO laptop manufactures could sacrifice size/weight savings to accomodate space for video cards and required cooling. Carrying a laptop around thats an extra 10mm thicker than a standard one wouldn't be an issue for most people wanting performance required.

Anyone else have any views on this?

Dave

 

[MadMango]

I remember reading an article a few months back on

http://www.anandtech.com

where they reviewed a few Tablet computers. The benifits of the Tablets were longer battery life, more standard internal componets, etc.

I might be getting my articles confused, but I want to say that the article talked about one of them running CAD (either ProE or ACAD) and it was surprisingly "nice". This might also have been a posting to comp.cad.solidworks.

I guess spending too much time in front of my monitor has affected my short term memory...

Anyways, I just remembered that the tablets only run on a special version of Windows, so you might run into problems trying to run SW on a non-approved OS. It still might be worth looking into.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[SBaugh]

What ever you buy don't go cheap on the laptop. If your wanting realibility with SW on a laptop get the better video card, don't get the ATI's or the Geforce cards. Get the Quadro. You will kick yourself when if you get the cheaper laptop with the low grade video card. You will save a lot of money getting those laptops but you won't save anytime or headache if you buy one.

I have a Dell 8200 with 512 RAM, XP Pro, and a GF 4 440 go video card. The worst card you can get with the dell laptops to run SW on. You can open parts and assmeblies alright, but if you open a part of an assemlby...it's time for a smoke or coffee break which you do . I take a nap . Everything about this computer is fine except for the video card and once you get the laptop (to my knowledge about laptops) the video card cannot be exchanged with another card.

So pay the money and get the M50 if you don't to , , or feel after you purchasing the lower end laptop.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help

 

[josephv]

Hello Dave,

It is important that you do not get a "gaming" video card. You want a video card that can handle Solid Modelling (like the Quadro 2Go). Here are a couple laptops...

IBM ThinkPad A30P with an ATI Mobility FireGL 7800
Dell Precision M40 with a nVidia Quadro 2Go
Dell Precision M50 with a nVidia Quadro 500 GoGL

Cheers,

Joseph

 

[borsht]

I agree with josephv. I have the dell precision m50 with nvidia quadro 500 GOGL. It's kickin butt, but as far as gaming's concerned, It runs jedi knight excellently. Only drawback-Needs a better carrying case, its heavy.

 

[Rocko]

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200
768 DDR Ram
64MB Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go
XP Home
UXGA ultra high definition screen

I have been very happy with this laptop. It runs both my CAM software and SW2003 at the same time with no problems. I mainly do industrial design so i will have alot of intensive features in my part but not alot of assembly type work. Now I would not suggest doing large assemblies on it because of the video card. One trick that i did to increase performance was to change in the bios the setting to max performance. Another thing people forget with a laptop that all intel mobile processors will clock down if on battery power. I use mine on ac power if doing alot of cad work.
The 8200 has been replaced with the 8500 but it is still quite a bit cheaper than the M50.

 

[djw2k3]

Thanks for the comments guys,

It does seem kind of odd to me that there seem to be very few (I know there must be more than what are menstioned here) options when it comes to a high end 3D CAD/modelling laptop.

Just my thoughts anyway.

Cheerio

Dave

 

[whippet]

FYI
The Dell M60 has the NVIDIA Quadro Go700 128MB card available. Not for free of course .

have fun make money
Paul

 

[relswick]

Hi Joseph V.

Does it really matter if you get a 'gaming' video card or not, so long as your video card RAM is a minimum of 64mB? The lager the RAM on the video card, the better I expect the program to run. Besides, if a company is ready to pay the $$$ for Solidworks, I would expect it is ready to pay for the video card as well.

If you are doing some serious engineering design, I would expect the company not to skip on the cost of the the tools to perform the work.

I also noticed no one mentioned a docking station with a video card in it. Just a thought.

 

[MadMango]

There is a great difference between gaming cards and CAD cards? Yes, it matters a lot when it comes to ghosted images, strange blocks appearing on your display and missing/disapearing lines and such.

You kind of answered your own question, in that the company should be buying you a CAD card over a gamming card, especially if they are willing to buy a solid modeler.

Wanna Tip? faq731-376
"Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."

 

[StarrRider]

djw2k3

I purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1805 a year and a half ago. This is a mid-level laptop with a 1000 mhz Celeron processon / 512 ram / and a built in video card. I think the cost of it was $1,400 to $1600 at that time - I'm not sure because I got it as part of a replacement package for a dead laptop.

I was running SW2001 at the time on a 350 P3 machine at work – they were dragging their feet about purchasing replacement machines. I did a speed comparison between the two systems and then quickly disconnected my work machine and started using my laptop. A short time later – they offered me an AMD 1500+ (I think) machine (the 2100+ was available) – I did another speed comparison and gave it back to them (It was marginally faster) – They eventually gave me a halfway decent machine but they specified a nVidia GeForce 2 graphics card – Hay - what can I say - Stupid AND Cheap

I do have to use software OpenGL – but it worked as my desktop for 4 or 5 months – that is good for me

Lee

You are just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

 

[SWVB101]

BUT...
If you do get a Game Card...
Get nVidia GeForce 4

my SW copy at home works great with this card...

voodoo cards and SW DO NOT MIX...

and whatever you do... DO NOT BUY the cheapest card you can find...

In 9.99999 cases out of 10... YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

And get a card with as much memory as you can... SolidWorks DOES Use It...

-------------Botom line-----------
If you can Afford it get a WildCat
If you can't... nVidia GeForce 4

3dlabs 10PK OEM WILDCAT VP 880 PRO 256 MB Video Card ~$4,017

GeForce4 Ti 4600 GPU,128MB DDR 128-bit,8 X AGP/TV-Out/DVI ~$229

 

[Rocko]

I think like all business decisions you must weigh the cost benifit. I really think that unless you are doing extremely large assemblies and lots of aeronatuical, automotive work the video cards that cost $1500 and up are a waste of money. Plus we have all seen those specialty video card companies come and go ie Elsa Gloria Cards ect.. I have found that ATI cards are not SW friendly typically but NVIDIA cards are usually friendly. I think in these economic times it is unrealistic to expect a company to pay more for a video card than they do the whole new workstation decked out.

 

[StarrRider]

Gentlemen

Please read the Title for this thread. It is NOT about choosing a video card. It is about using SW on a Laptop. Since most Laptops simply do not have the room or the ability to handle the heat generated by a video cards – your posts are almost inappropriate.

This does not mean that the video card issue should be ignored. Instead – it should become a primary consideration in the purchase of the laptop. I got lucky when I purchased mine. I had trouble with SW until I set the Software OpenGL check box. Then I compared the built in Video Card to the list of acceptable cards on the SW web site. There was not a direct match – But – most of the cards built by that company had problems and needed OpenGL. – I also found that if I had spent $250 more I would have gotten a much better Laptop that did not have the video card limitations that mine did.

So if you haven’t purchased the Laptop as yet – print out the complete list – and then use it to make your purchasing decision. Shop in your price range - but eliminate every laptop that has video problems. Decide in advance if you are willing to accept the slower performance of the software OpenGL (time SW on a similar machine with it on and off).

Lee

You are just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

 

[NathanN]

ATi and Nvidia have both just released new video cards for laptops that are very nice. Nvidia's QuadroFX Go is probably the best choice for running SWX at the moment.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=quadrofx_go

 

[gedkins]

The main bottleneck in a laptop is the hard drive speed as compared to a workstation. The hard drives speeds in a laptop are typically 4000 RPM to 5400 RPM. This slows the retrieve speed from disk considerably when pulling up assemblies of any size or part count. Now, the world has moved forward and Hitachi has recently introduced a new high speed 7200 RPM drive (same as IDE equipped workstations). Dell has a few 7200 RPM equipped drives but the cost is very high($4500+). If you want a great workstation replacement in the form of a laptop, check out the big Sagers (Toshiba in disguise) at

http://www.discountlaptops.com.

I have used these machines exclusively and they are just great and much better than half the cost of an equivalent Dell.

 

[SBaugh]

The bottle neck in most laptops IMO is the video card. Because in the recent years, if you only wanted to pay a decent $$ amount for a laptop you could, but you couldn't get a good video card that would run SW well.

All the HDD has to do with it, is opening the file off the HDD not the refresh speed on the screen. That's the job of the video card.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
3DVision Technologies

http://www.3dvisiontech.com

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376
When in doubt, always check the help