Engineering laptop (work / office environment)

[xXDeltaXx]

Budget (including currency): unknown (as cheap as they can get away with)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Autodesk Inventor (large models / assemblies), AutoCAD, possibly Ansys

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): likely use a 1440p main screen.

 

We have had our current desktop PCs for a few years now, and work are finally looking to upgrade... they always aim below minimum spec, and we have to fight to get anything half decent. This year, they are looking at laptops as the 'preferred option'.

 

One or two of the engineers currently have laptops which are about in line with the desktops, both the laptops and desktops struggle to run 2000+ part Inventor assemblies, but the laptops feel more sluggish than the desktops (presumably not maintaining the clock speed) - so I'm really worried about being stuck with a POS for the next 3 to 5 years.

Current suggestion looks to be a Dell 5550: https://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop/workstations/mobile-precision-5550/spd/precision-15-5550-laptop/n001p5550emea_vi

 

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

[brob]

Sluggishness could be related to cpu performance, but it might also be an issue with available memory and storage speed.

 

With respect to the linked system, a higher capacity NVMe drive would be a good idea.  As would more memory, I suspect. But I'm not familiar with your current usage and can't be sure.

[xXDeltaXx]

The current desktops are Dell Precision 3620's with an i7-7700K (@4.2), with 32GB of RAM, a Toshiba 512GB NVMe drive, and a Quadro P4000. So, that's the base line...

I'm going to make a wild stab at the i7-7700K's base line being 4.2GHz and the laptops frequently running around the 3.5GHz as being a contibutary factor to their crappiness.

 

 

[brob]

2 hours ago, xXDeltaXx said:

The current desktops are Dell Precision 3620's with an i7-7700K (@4.2), with 32GB of RAM, a Toshiba 512GB NVMe drive, and a Quadro P4000. So, that's the base line...

I'm going to make a wild stab at the i7-7700K's base line being 4.2GHz and the laptops frequently running around the 3.5GHz as being a contibutary factor to their crappiness.

 

 

 

Without  knowing the laptop specs I couldn't say. Certainly Inventor does better with higher performance cores. 

[xXDeltaXx]

1 hour ago, brob said:

 

Without  knowing the laptop specs I couldn't say. Certainly Inventor does better with higher performance cores. 

Well, I asked for the specs of the current laptop and only got the CPU... an i7-8750H (@2.2). So, no wonder it's slow as hell. Also has a similar NVMe drive and a lesser Quadro P2000.

Not really a comparable spec. Especially as Inventor likes fast cores, rather than multiple cores.

 

So a proposed laptop with a 2.7GHz base isn't going to cut it

 

Inventor specs are really suggesting a base of 3.3GHz with more than 32GB of RAM.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Inventor-2021.html

[xXDeltaXx]

Some of Dell's websites are brilliant, refers to a discontinued product, which then suggest another discontinued one lol.

The Precision 5550 looks to have a top spec of an i7-10850H (2.70 GHz to 5.10 GHz).

So, not sure if I'm aiming too high for a faster processor base clock in a laptop, Dell just being crap, or really just need to stick desktop.

 

My Solidworks supplier has the Dell 5550 as an 'allrounder' with anything high end as 'enquire'.

The local Inventor supplier has the Dell 5550 and 7550... with slower base clocks and better GPUs.

[brob]

A desktop workstation is going to be able to offer better performance for the same dollars.

 

Many laptop cpu have a low base clock. It doesn't really reflect the overall performance. Core clock speeds are very dynamic based on demand.