How important is a workstation GPU really?

[cbass-of-the-sea]

Hi all,

 

I'm a soon-to-be Civil Engineering student and find myself needing a laptop for school. The engineering college recommends (and sells ((out of stock)) from the school bookstore) a Dell Precision 5570 that has an RTX A1000 in it.

I can find renewed models on Amazon varying from $1500 to $2000 which is quite a bit of damage. The newer and nicer ones are even more, depending on how much Dell upcharges for RAM and storage increases.

 

I'm wondering how necessary this would be for school workloads if anyone has any engineering school experience. I suppose I would be running Civil3D and other CAD programs. Honestly, I just don't want to haul around a big heavy computer with bad battery life and a chunky cumbersome charging cable all day and on my bike. I realize conventional gaming laptops are like this as well.

 

During my research, I've come across the idea to use Parsec which is a sort of remote streaming solution. I have a PC that I would have in my apartment with an RX 7900 XTX in it, that I could use to run most of these programs and then just remote into it with a less powerful (and lighter, the weight and portability is mostly what's important to me ) laptop while on campus. I run into the question of how necessary a professional workstation GPU is again though. The only hard requirement from the school for the computer I bring to class is the screen is at least 15 inches.

 

Thank you very much!

[da na]

Workstation GPUs use the same dies as consumer cards, most of the difference is in the drivers. 

If the school WiFi is fast enough, you could use Parsec. Try CAD on your Radeon first, though, and see if the card does what it should. Hopefully the card is stable enough.

Also Amazon is not the best place to look for... anything, really. You could find the same laptop on eBay for $800 I'm sure - and a slightly older Precision with similar specs for like $600. You could also install your own RAM and SSDs and save a good deal of money.

[Tetras]

4 minutes ago, cbass-of-the-sea said:

I run into the question of how necessary a professional workstation GPU is again though. The only hard requirement from the school for the computer I bring to class is the screen is at least 15 inches.

I'd be very surprised if you're doing projects as a student that require serious hardware, because well,.. most students are poor and you're usually just learning the basics, so the demo projects aren't likely to be super complicated ones that take many hours to render. The main question is if you have app and driver support for your XTX, because if you don't the app might be nearly unusable (lag and artifacts 'n stuff), so that's the one to confirm.

[8tg]

The drivers are different and do have a small average performance increase over their consumer counterpart but that’s not the primary reason for the cost increase. It’s because the drivers and the hardware are certified to work reliably for the software.

The Quadro name and drivers are an expensive warranty you effectively purchase that lets you know “this card WILL work with solidworks/maya/blender/etc with ZERO issue for its supported lifespan”.

For a student, hobbyist, or individual doing small business, you do not need that kind of hardware. Large companies buy that hardware because the cost is negligible at their scale for the peace of mind that the hardware will continue to make them money without any issues.

For you, buy a regular gaming laptop instead if you need a dedicated GPU. Because for you if autodesk maya hard crashes your GPU drivers, you need to roll back a driver version, load your last auto save, and continue with maybe 20 minutes of lost time.

If a big studio was using consumer cards and drivers, and maya hard crashed their GPU drivers, the expanded scale of work they’re doing and having dedicated IT means they’re going to have extended downtime while IT handles changing the drivers, and rolling back to a previous autosave for many users may lose a lot of work. That’s time, and time is money.

[8tg]

This is also why you see professional cards even just being used as display adapters in office PCs.

Your average slim optiplex, if an additional DisplayPort is needed, you would just add a GT 1030.

But businesses won’t buy a gt 1030, for the same reasons of system stability and reliability. So you see Quadro T400’s or Radeon Pro WX cards used for that purpose.

[jaslion]

Check if the radeon is supported by your programs but best bet is to just have a laptop with you that can do the job.

 

A quadro doesnt matter normally for a student and you can just get away with any rtx card. The 5570 can also easily be found sub 1000 on ebay.

 

 

[cbass-of-the-sea]

23 minutes ago, da na said:

Also Amazon is not the best place to look for... anything, really. You could find the same laptop on eBay for $800 I'm sure - and a slightly older Precision with similar specs for like $600. You could also install your own RAM and SSDs and save a good deal of money.

I feel so dumb doing all this searching and stressing and I didn't even think of ebay, that's huge. Thank you!

[johnt]

I'm a civil engineer. I only needed CAD once in college for a specific lab project in surveying. They will give you access to a beefier PC for serious work as you progress in school. Sometimes it's proprietary software and it's not worth putting on your own device for a couple homework assignments, or the software has no trial period for you to use. Most of the time the trial period is not long enough to make it through a semester or quarter. Other times you will get license codes with the book, but it's not usually for a serious 3D software. Integrated graphics will serve you perfectly for college.