I’ve had a W540, since November. As long as it’s plugged in, it’s been a good computer, but it is throttled a lot unplugged.
Some notes:
- Upgrading the video chip is not possible.
- The W541 is out, which has a proper trackpad, although, I mostly use the machine with a mouse.
- Some lower cost processors for the W54x can only use 16 GB or RAM, others can use 32GB. In mine, the 4800qm, can use 32GB.
- There are 2 screens for the w54x, a crappy 1920x1080, which is fine for resolution, but it’s not IPS, so it’s not good. The other panel is a 2880x1680 IPS, which is the best screen I’ve seen on a 15" laptop, but Rhino icons get small. I run less anti-aliasing at higher resolutions.
As far as the GPU, I have the K2100, which performs pretty well for Rhino running on a laptop that I can carry on my back.
On Holomark v2,2,03
Adaptive CPU/GPU power management: Total Score: 43692
Full blast CPU/GPU power management: Total Score: 46464
So, what I did: bought the slightly upgraded processor and K2100, but not a SSD, which can be upgraded later, unlike the other two. You might look for K1100 scores. My processor is 2.7GHz, which is a medium speed one. Broadwell, will be slightly faster and more power efficient, but the next GPU will be much better on power.
I think it comes down to the size of the projects you are working on, and whether or not you might use the GPU for light gaming or Photoshop/Premier, which also use it, if it’s version 5.1 or better.
BTW, in thread: Holomark 2 Released!
I found a K1100 having a score of 42,294.
Perhaps the extra shaders are not as much of use to Rhino, or perhaps Rhino might be CPU bound. Interesting.
(Corrected K1100 Score.)