Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
I am looking at getting a vostro 1500 for school. I am looking at two different laptops both spec'd with a 2.0 ghz processor. My question is should i go for the 8600 T or with the 8400 GS suffice for CAD (Solidworks, Autocad, etc) I am a Mechanical Engineering major. I am trying to not spend too much.
the prices i have are 919.00 for the one with the 8600T and 729.00 (i think for the 128 MB Vid card). I am looking in the outlet by the way.
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1. Compare the minimum and recommended requirements for your CAD programs to see if any additional video card power will be useful... Then you have to figure out if the cost is more than you see as useful (also called the Price
erformance ratio...)
2. Yes the Wireless cards are interchangable.... -
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The wireless cards, that come from Dell unless otherwise specified, are Intel chips. Remember, DELL is a REMARKETERS- they assemble parts and put a sticker on them with their company logo and name- but they use the Intel or broadcom wireless cards that plug into notebooks all across the spectrum. Essentially, it is simply a matter of the model number and voltages- if the form factor fits, it will work most of the time.
So the trick is to do a little google research (might bring ya back here most of the time) and see if you can find a variant of your notebook that has the same CPU and the WIRELESS CARD you want in it. That means it can be done, about 99% of the time. Get the part number and order from the makers or, say, on ebay where computer parts stores often sell them for a tiny bit less than the makers.
For CAD stuff (I'm an architect and modeler)... Neither the 8400 or 8600 was specifically DESIGNED for the kind of work we do, but they are BEEFY enough that they CAN do it. If you want a rig that you can use the next 12 years probably, then get one with the quad GPU cores or such (Dell precisioin). Otherwise you really WILL NOT NOTICE the difference- as the difference between the two is mostly for a gamer's perspective in 3d rendering on the fly (so if you will be doing some solid works 3D flythroughs all the time, perhaps get the 8600 with the beefiest memory you can afford!).
Also remember, the 8600 isn't as fast as a 7800 -the SECOND LETTER designates the crunching-based power for Nvidia cards. The 8xxx series is Dx10 supportive =more hard-core FPS gamer stuff!
MOst of what we modelers and cad people will use, will run even on the older Radeon 8000 series, or x1400's (ati) no problems. I spent a long time purchasing my XPS with the 79xx GPU, and picked up my mom a HP dv8000 series with eh 7600 gpu. The ONLY place I ever noticed a difference is in CoD4 and such FPS games and instensive (1-million polygons) 3d object rendering on the fly...
For those who still are asking this question, get whatever one you most like in other ways- the 8400 and 8600 for WORK-applications, are essentially identical except in TINY maybe 10-minutes a day instances of CAD rendering and such. Get the cheaper one and spend the left over money you would have spent on the gaming GPU on NICE MEMORY and a WARRANTY instead,
IMHO!~!!!!!!
I.E.: Side by side, identical laptops, with one that is configured with the way I just mentioned, doing this kind of work, you WILL NOTICE the difference and like the set up I'm advocating over the gamers one with the higher digit abstract number B.S. from Nvidia to sell more products. In the REAL world, this rig with more memory and a bigger L2 cache CPU will rock the gamer rig in CAd stuff 100% and do it in a NOTICEABLE WAY... of course, your FPS will drop if you turn on the game rig for FPS games next to the CAD -based work rig.
-my $0.02 worth.
8400 GS Vs 8600 GT Video cards for CAD
Discussion in 'Dell' started by MXandSXracer21, Sep 18, 2007.
