Hello everyone, looking for a bit of advice. I have a student license for Rhino 5 on my Lenovo Flex 5 laptop, with a NVIDIA GeForce MX940 graphics card. I’d like to upgrade to a commercial Rhino 7 license and I’m wondering if it will run ok, as I only have 2GB of VRAM (I meet all other system requirements). I use Rhino for jewelry modeling and nothing too complicated-- really I’m still learning and these models are for personal use/side gigs-- and it’s never had a problem with Rhino 5. Equipment upgrades are not out of the question but keeping this little laptop going a while longer is most practical for the time being.
On a related note, has anyone upgraded their graphics card in a Lenovo laptop? Is that a worthwhile exercise?
Rhino 6 and 7 make a lot better use of your OpenGL video card. The flipside to that is that they demand more from your hardware, Rhino needs something more than a potato to run well, and your drivers all need to be kept up-to-date. The MX940 seems to be somewhat of a potato, but it is better than Intel Integrated video, so it might work? Try the demo out…
I run Rhino V7 on a laptop with NVIDIA GeForce MX940 graphics with no problems - but I don’t do any significant rendering. The current “requirements” for V7 appear to be based in part on the assumption that rendering capability is importatnt to eveyone who uses Rhino needs.
The internal construction of a laptop is completely different than a desktop. Graphics chips in a laptop are on the same board as the CPU, etc, not on a separate card. I don’t think it is possible to upgrade graphics in a laptop.
Thank you both for your input! I’m not doing much in the way of rendering, either, and I do have access to another machine should I need it… the convenience factor of the laptop is just big for me right now. If I was modeling all day, every day I would surely move to a desktop workstation.
I have a Lenovo Flex 5 and I am under the impression that the graphics card can be removed, but I understand that this generally isn’t the case in laptops. I did try to buy a machine where at least some of the parts would be replaceable in case of failure, but again, I know that “build-your-own” and “laptop” don’t get along great.