HD 3000 for mech engineering?

Hi everyone,

My Dell Latitude unfortunately died so I'm in the market for a new laptop, and this T520 on the Lenovo Outlet caught my eye:
Lenovo | 

However, I'll be going to college next year and will probably major in mechanical engineering. Is the HD 3000 in that T520 competent for CAD, or should I look for something with a Quadro/FireGL? Thanks!

 

No, the Intel GPU wouldn't run mech. engineering programs well at all. You don't really need a Quadro/FirePro for school, but it would be nice (but you can still use a GeForce/Radeon). If you're considering a T520, I'd suggest you look for one with the Quadro NVS 4200M.

 

it would only work in CAD if the model you have is very simple, otherwise it won't keep up.

If you need to use cAD a lot then you would need a dedicated graphics card (it could be a gaming card). If you use a lot of OpenGL based CAD softwares (Solidworks & CATIA), then you would need a Quadro/FirePro cards.

if you only use the software when on a desk, then you could consider a DIY Dock with a desktop grade gaming card.

Even your E6410 maybe suffice if you go with a DIY setup.

 

For CAD workload, I would prefer a GeForce, not a "Quadro" NVS. The NVS cards are S-L-O-W.

How about a IdeaPad with a mid-range GeForce?

Don't set your expectations high though. Due to the lack of Quadro features and drivers, the GeForce is not going to serve you very well neither. But at least it's faster for rendering compared to the NVS.

 

Why would a NVS be slower than an equivalent GeForce? Yes, pit the NVS 5400M to a 580M or 680M or something crazy like that and it'd be slower, but something like a 650M or maybe even a 660M would be roughly the same for rendering (especially since Kelper is gimped by nVidia for professional work, since they want you to buy the Quadro line).

The Latitude E6520 laptops my peers have (w/ NVS 4200M) do Solidworks rendering just fine in a reasonable amount of time (quickly, since this is academic and not some massive-scale production unit or something).

 

Re: privatejarhead

I never looked seriously into NVS cards, so I may be wrong. However, according to what I read, the NVS line is built for driving large hi-res monitors to show 2D images. It's stable, has enough power and output speed for several monster TVs, but simply doesn't do well when it comes to intensive 3D rendering. Unless you work with external monitors very often, not sure why you should have it on a notebook.

The NVS 5400M has only 96 cores (It's actually a Fermi, so you can count that as 192.), and uses DDR3. The FP32 peak is 250 Gflops. On the other side, GTX 650M comes with 384 cores and GDDR5 (optional). It does 650 Gflops for FP32 if GDDR5 is available. Of course you can always OC a bit on both if you want to.

The Kelper is a strange chip. Even the Tesla K10 doesn't come with ECC memory, and FP64 is a disaster. Since both features are often needed for "pro" work, I won't call Kelper a better-for-pro. Besides, the new architecture is giving less local cache to each core on average, leading to a higher "memory wall" for may GPGPU applications only needed by pros. Very unfortunately, lots of my customers/users rush to update their workstations using the latest and "best-ever-made" Quadro/Tesla cards without asking any questions. My only option now is to follow them. Super slow FP64? Need to add additional safe net for the lack of ECC? Who cares?

 

To some people, ECC is important, but realistically doesn't really matter, like you said. In industry, ISV is very important, though we're talking about a student. I was just trying to say that we shouldn't discount the card simply because it's a NVS. Like the 630M, it's weak, but they have their place is what I'm trying to say. It's certainly better than the HD 4000, the only other option found in most business-class laptops.

 

Agree. For a mech engineering student doing CAD practise, ISV is more important than ECC or GPGPU performance. I was just frustrated with my personal work problem and went off-topic.

 

It happens lol. Anyway, I suppose we shouldn't get too off-topic. I'll wait and see if OP posts anything else in this thread.

 

It's Kepler guys

 

Do check the engineering-related benchmarks for the Quadro GPUs on NotebookCheck. They're 3-5x that of the same tier GeForce.