MikG

Thanks for ux story Marissa. I lean towards Nvidia too. Between the two M6500 choices, the specs differ widely. I'm just wondering about real-world compatibility and performance.

Thanks Jim and thanks for the link. The target is $300, but it'll probably end up at $400. Do you foresee any VW performance or compatibility differences between a Quadro FX3800 and a FirePro M7820? The FirePro is DDR5, OpenGL 4.1, and has about 6X as many streams/cudas. On the other hand, AMD doesn't seem to have Win10 drivers for the m7820 (which is not a big issue since I'm inclined to stick with Win7). More differences in the two cards can be found here: http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/NVIDIA_Quadro_FX_3800M__vs__ATI_FirePro_M7820/

Looking for a 17" 1920x1200 Win7 laptop. Much less interested in 1920x1080. An M6500 from 2011 with an i7-920XM seems to fit in the budget. M6600s and newer weren't built with 1920x1200 screens. A forum search turns up only one thread with M6500. Is the M6500 suitable for the first year for a student beginner doing landscape design with VW2016, sometimes with an external wuxga monitor? If so, which video card would be best (all 1GB): Quadro FX2800 Quadro FX3800 DDR3 128 CUDAs OpenGL 3.0 Driver: 2015.11.9 FirePro M7820 DDR5 800 Strms OpenGL 4.1 Driver: 5/14/2015 http://www.gpuzoo.com/Compare/NVIDIA_Quadro_FX_3800M__vs__ATI_FirePro_M7820/ http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_3800_us.html Any other suggestions in that price range $300 for a 17" 1920x1200 laptop?

As a new user, I just wrote a long message (background and a handful of questions). Clicked submit. The next page indicated a missing-field error. Used the back button. Message was no longer there. This is the fourth or fifth time this has happened to me on the VW website: several other times when trying to register, and when trying to update my profile. Really? What gives?