I need to buy a new laptop and this will be my first “proper” machine. I study product design and am searching for the right laptop for me. To get it out the way, I am not planning to buy a MAC and will most likely not change my mind since I will need Windows
Coming across MSI laptops as a non gamer, I do really like the look and the GE70 and GE60 seem to fit the requirements
Did a quick review search on it after seeing its specs. Was disappointed to see less than 2.5 hours battery life… for work its gonna drive u insane to hunt for a power socket every 2+ hours.
Any desktop replacement laptop is generally going to suck power especially if you are running CAD or any other CPU/memory intensive app.
With that said, I recently picked up a GS70 for some development work. There are some things I don’t like (namely Windows 8.1) and an overly sensitive touch pad, but the battery life has been surprisingly good when I’ve needed it - but don’t expect it to get hours of life when pumping CAD. The battery supply is large, but not as heavy as the huge power brick I have on my HP work station. Buying a second to keep in studio or at home would help though.
Overall they make pretty good hardware…on par with any other consumer stuff that’s coming out of Taiwan these days.
I’m in the exact same situation besides that I’m not studying anymore.
The MSI seems interesting, it’s just that I also want it to have a clean, professional design.
The HP Envy seems interesting too.
Does anyone know of a laptop that is great for CAD (8+Gb RAM, quadcore/8-core processor) and also has touch screen capability with a pen stylus for sketching?
The thread in this forum: 2012 Win8 Sketching Tablets covers a lot of ground regarding touch screen sketching. I don’t believe there are quadcore machines out there though that will serve as a Portable, long battery life laptop.
I have a G70 (Pretty much same specs except for the ram) and it works just fine. Like Cyberdemon here, I don’t like windows 8.1 or the touch pad, but other than that it’s been working pretty well for the last 6 months. I recommend it but I don’t know yet how it’ll age, hopefully as good as my former laptop. It was an Acer with 6+ years of heavy duty on him, died doing a simulation in SW.
I was doing some late night reading, but I’m pretty sure this was like 10 threads down
The computer won’t however explode or even catch on fire when not using quadro or fire cards. Hell I worked at one startup where money was tight so I had a laptop with onboard as my workstation.
Solidworks plays generally fine with consumer GPU’s. If you have money for a workstation great, but unless you are doing extremely large assembly work most decent GPU’s will work fine.
I know a number of engineers these days who are running all their Pro E work from Surface Pro tablets to give you an idea of how far GPU performance has come.
I’ve experienced some bugs with gaming GPU’s, especially with large files. I recall one feature in particular that kept crashing SolidWorks every time I clicked on the icon. I ended up having to access the tool via other methods (i.e. pull-down menu, right click, toolbar), just like you can with any SW feature.
SolidWorks will run on most video processors, but just don’t be surprised if it crashes more often than with SW certified ones.
I’ve been 3D modelling from Alias, Rhino and Solidworks on a 4+ year old Nvidia gaming card and I’ve built multiple PC’s for classmates with gaming cards. I haven’t heard of any issues with them in 3D modelling software.
