I’m looking to buy a laptop that I will use to on-the-go alongside my main desktop machine. I am on a budget, so hoping to spend no more than 1200 dollars. I wanted to know where to spend most of my money.
I don’t intend to do any hardcore rendering on this laptop. The only intensive commands that I use that I can think off top of my head is MAKE2D, MESHTONURB and MERGEALLFACE. I am under the assumption that since I don’t do much rendering, the order of importance of parts are CPU > GPU > RAM. Am I correct?
Some of the specs that I was considering towards Intel i5-7300HQ and GTX1050. But how much How much difference does i7 CPU make compared to an i5 processor? Also, how much GPU power do I need to smoothly orbit around model file, about 500mb in size?
Lenovo’s well build (carbon frame, anodised shell, etc) thinkpad range extends beyond the (-EDIT: Retracted-) mobile workstation stuff…
The yoga 460 with i7 & discrete GPU gets 40% off and dips down into @hafyboy budget. (And is a thinkoad)
But outside of lenovo there are a lot of i7’s, with 8-16gb ram and dGPU. Monitor resolution will be the biggest wildcard which affects price in that category.
I would say priority for rhino is: CPU > RAM > GPU.
With the caveats that you can often upgrade the RAM and that you only need a gpu; 940 -> 1050 -> quadro prob isn’t going to make a noticeable difference if you’re not rendering (and the quadro will provide poor bang for buck rendering)
EDIT: Lenovo’s workstations are more resonably priced than some of the others. I still think the additional cost for quadro ‘workstation certified’ stuff is wasted…
You ought to ensure that you have a decent SSD rather than a HDD as this will improve the speed of the laptop you choose. Rather than get a massive drive you could opt for a 500[GB] and invest in a decent 1TB external drive for backup and storage of your work (unless you have other options).
I would stick with a GTX whatever 4GB RAM or higher and not bother with a Quadro.
