Solidworks laptop?

[Ramses]

Friend asked about a lappy recommendation for Solidworks(he's taking a class).
I have no idea, I see the only approved cards on Solidworks site are upper end Fire/Quadro type stuff. Will any of the IGP or discreet gaming options work?
Off hand I figure an I5/I7 with 8+ gig of ram and whatever kind of GPU will work, he wants a 17" screen, favors Toshiba from good past experience but whatever.
Thoughts?

 

[rituraj]

I have never used solidwork but as it seems Intel IGP has limited support for solidwork. http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/videocardtesting.html

However it depends on version of the software, OS, etc.
You can also have a look at the HP Z-Book 17 if budget isn't an issue.

 

[ggadrian]

SolidWorks is mostly single threaded (except for the sim tools) so a high clocked i5 would be pretty decent if he's on a budget. If he isn't he should get the fastest i7 he can get.

In the graphics department, unless he gets a quadro the GPU doesn't matter that much. If there's no drivers support even a 880M suck big time. I think Intel HD has some kind of driver support, but no actually sure.

What's his workflow? In my university they use shitty i5 HP desktops with iGPU's just fine for the SolidWorks lessons and they do the job just fine; and most of the students use whatever 500€ laptop they bought. What I mean if that if he's taking basic to intermediate lessons he shouldn't worry that much about the laptop. On the other hand, if he wants to do some serious pro work he should get a high end mobile workstation, but that's gonna be incredibly expensive.

 

[corkyg]

Solidworks is primarily a software company focused on CAD. They have a laptop built to run their software. Aside from that, I never heard of it either. I would not call it mainstream.