CAD laptop

November 26, 2011 12:18 PM

Seeking advice on a laptop/notebook for CAD. That may also (possibly) be able to run a Playstation 2 emulator.

Any advice really - brands, models, caveats, recommendations, past experiences.

The story:

- Australia based
- The CAD software is Microstation V8 XM
- The OS will (most likely) be windows 7. Has to be windows of some sort.
- The work done will be mainly for the mining industry - P&IDs, layouts, general stuff, but also a fair bit of 3D modeling. Probably no animation, but the files get pretty big - entire mining plants down to bolts and handrails. Well, maybe not bolts, but a lot of detail.
- My default option would be to go with Dell Precision, but I'm annoyed with how Dell cripple their soundcards to remove the "record what you hear" option - this is going to double as my personal laptop, and that's something I'd like to have if possible.
- I'd also like it to run a Playstation 2 emulator - PCSX2. If possible. My existing computers (all over 4 years old) haven't been able to handle this, and from what I've read it seems to require some pretty high end stuff. I'm not sure if there are graphics cards that are intended for both CAD & gaming in the one card, or even if that's relevant - perhaps it's more the processor speed that's important to run PCSX2? CAD is the priority, but this'd be a nice addition.
- Ability to hook up to external monitors (laptop screen + one monitor good, laptop screen + two monitors better)

Um, that might be it. Cheers.

posted by hayeled to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I can only speak to the PCSX2 question: it wants as fast an Intel CPU as you can give it. It's not too bothered about more than two cores but it wants lots and lots of speed. You don't need a spectacular GPU for it (my old 8800GT and my current GTX560 are about the same in PCSX2, but kicking the CPU from 3.1ghz to 3.5 made a noticeable difference) so as long as yours has the gaming performance of a mid-range card from a few years ago you'll be fine. Just feed it all the Ghz you can get.

You might find this GAF thread useful.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 2:29 PM on November 26, 2011

Spent some time looking for a similar laptop myself. Just jumped on a Black Friday sale from newegg for an Asus G74SX-XN1 for a sale price of ~$1100. An Intel 2nd gen I7 processor, 12GB RAM with a drop in slot for another 4GB, two hardrive bays (comes with a 500GB 7500RPM one), and a high end NVidea Graphics card. It's sold more as a gaming platform but I'm going to use if for software work. A little nervous since I found some of them seem to have trackpad jumpiness issues since I bought it (hasn't got here yet) but I'm planning on using it mostly with and external mouse it shouldn't be that big a deal. You might look around for a similar deal or the newegg site has refurbished versions of this and the previous G73 model.


posted by aleph at 3:42 PM on November 26, 2011

Dell Precisions are nice BIM/CAD machines. The M4600/M6600 models are essentially the same machine with different screen sizes. I've used the "recording what you hear" feature for recording a webmeeting with audio through VoIP on the M6600 so it's not disabled on that model.

Pros:

*SSD option - 256 GB of incredibly fast primary storage
*Slimmer power supply than the M6300
*Full-size number pad
*Uses the E-series port replicator

Cons:

*Can't drive three monitors. There's an HDMI and VGA port but they can't be used in conjunction with the laptop screen.
*Requires a quad-core for 8+ GB RAM. There's 4 DIMM slots only two are active with a dual-core processor.

Microstation XM complains about hyperthreading at startup, just ignore the warning as it's from the first generation of HT processors. Otherwise XM is well behaved in Windows 7 64-bit even if it's not officially supported by Bentley.
posted by llin at 10:22 AM on November 28, 2011