Dell Precision M6500

[MikG]

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?

Edited February 25, 2016 by MikG

[PVA - Admin]

That should be alright to start out, you won't be able to do much better in the $300 range certainly.

In the future though, these are the graphics options support normally recommends:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/1385/Technical+Support+Graphics+Card+%28GPU%29+Recommendations

I agree about the screen aspect ratio, 16:10 just feels much better than 16:9. Unfortunately on the Windows side it can be hard to find laptops in that configuration for a reasonable price.

[MikG]

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/

Edited February 25, 2016 by MikG

[Marissa Farrell]

Just to chime in with no implication that I know anything at all - I was using a FirePro W5000 and it was a terrible experience when it came down to rendering. In my case, if I had light objects in my document and turned all of them off in the visualization palette, I would get a crash. Every time.

Jim may still have better insight for you, but I'm pro NVIDIA.

[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.

Edited February 25, 2016 by MikG

[PVA - Admin]

I would say the Quadro if its a choice between that and a FirePro, FirePro drivers can be a real pain with Vectorworks specifically.

Unfortunately we do not utilize CUDA cores yet, but on the base stats it should work for planting plans and primarily 2D landscape work. Laptops in general can be hard to choose GPUs for, as a lot of them are extremely overpriced when they include a discrete GPU.