best laptop for cad

[roasted pinnaple]

hi I do a lot of cad in my free time and I have a pretty good pc for that but my laptop is a really old macbook pro and cant cad at all so I was hoping for some recommendations? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

budget? dell 7720?

[Guest The Viking]

look into hp's mobile workstations line-up, they are all certified for cad/autodesk and adobe. Usually come i7+quadro card

 

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations-family-page/index.html?jumpid=in_r11260_us/en/psg/ws_overview/hero-zbook-family-learn-more

 

you're looking for the zbook 15 or 17, a friend of mine has one and they are absolute beasts at all pro-software stuff.

 

see if you can find one second hand though, as they are pretty pricey on their own (easily 2K $).

[Guest]

Really depends on the kind of CAD youre talking about.

I still use my Thinkpad G40 for 2D cad drawings in AutoCAD 2005, and thats just pic related

And yes, that is a desktop pentium 4 in a laptop.

 

However the furthest it can do in 3D is some sketchup stuff.

So if you want decent 3D cad performance, your best bet is to look into something new with dedicated graphics, optimally something with at least an MX150 for casual drafting.

For slightly older, look into business workstations with dedicated graphics, optimally quadro options. A Thinkpad T420 with the Quadro NVS4200m would be a good option for around 200$ used.

 

And if youre doing above hobbyist workloads, where you genuinely need high end workstation hardware, look into a Thinkpad P51 or P71, theyre mobile xeon, quadro, 64gb of ram types of machines, nothing on them is a compromise for a mobile workstation.

But theyre several thousand dollars, so that can also be something to consider.

 

[genexis_x]

Lenovo Thinkpad P series, HP Zbook, Dell Precision, all with optional Xeon M CPU and Quadro GPU