manuel Posted November 17, 2008 Report Share Posted November 17, 2008 Ok so my dad just got a new job but needs a new laptop so he can work on the go and from home etc... so he needs a laptop - the main program he needs to run is autocad 08 / 09 - which I assume means it needs to be fairly decent on the graffics front ? I havent dealt in laptops for a while now but seem to remember that mostly, graffics were on board shitty things - and for decent cards they cost mega-dollar ? the budget is around the 500 mark but could stretch up to 600 if it was necessary (but not prefferable). So can anyone recommend a laptop or the type of graffics card / type thing I should be looking out for ? or wether the budget is not enough etc ... RJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Quigley Posted November 17, 2008 Report Share Posted November 17, 2008 If his company is willing to give him an AutoCAD licence for his own computer then I would have thought they'd have provided him with a laptop (Usually from Dell as businesses seem to love dell).Anyway back on topic, I have an old Acer laptop (cost £500 4 years ago) and that graphics card coped brilliantly with 2D AutoCAD and pretty well with 3D. Was an ATI Radion Xpress 200M card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greetings Posted November 18, 2008 Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 Apps like CAD require a lot of memory from graphics cards to work efficiently. 128mb is enough, though anything over should boost performance even further.Another thing is the ram itself, you want as much of that as possible. Since it's not that expensive any more, 4gb would be a good idea. It'll help to work on big projects more efficiently.Finally, don't go for an integrated graphics controller since those don't always have dedicated memory. The only benefit of having an integrated card is power efficiency, they use significantly less energy comparing to a dedicated card even when idle. I really can't advise on what card to go for but there's a wide choice so you shouldn't have a problem finding the right one. If Nvidia makes Quadro cards for laptops, you could look at those. They are specially designed for 3d applications and modelling in general. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZeroMatt Posted November 18, 2008 Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 The dell precision range is deffinately worth looking into although from what I remember they may be a bit too pricey for what you are after.Getting a quadro fx card with the laptop will increase the price loads but they really are needed. The only other way really would be to get a gaming type laptop which wouldn't be ideal but can still perform ok-ish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manuel Posted November 18, 2008 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2008 ok so - taking that on board then - how about this ....LINK£500 ...4gb ram256mb video memory dedicated ( I think )2ghz core2duo ...blah ... what do we think ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.