(urgent)Designing a laptop for rendering(Architecture Design software)

[Marcuscato]

do I need higher processing power or a more powerful graphics card? Is an amd a8 better than an I5 third gen?

Software used will be like sketch up or maya etc.

 

[Ubrales]

Welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums!

Programs like Autocad will run much better with 8 GBs (or higher) RAM. The 'regen' command will work faster, and circles will be represented as circles and not polygons. The same goes for CPU frequency; the higher the frequency the better the program will run.

I use a first generation (i7), and also a third gen i7 to run Autocad. The speed is not an issue. The computer is faster than my design thinking speed.

Before all this I started out using Autocad on a Pentium 4, 1.6 GHz (slow) processor. Even here, the computer was faster than my brain!

For such work a large screen is essential.

Regarding your question, take the above into account, try to get 8 GBs of RAM and look for the best priced computer. You will need 320 GBs or higher hard disk, and an external drive for backups.

Good luck!

 

[Marcuscato]

I am currently running a core 2 duo, will it be a sufficient upgrade?
Also I think that rendering using sketch up etc takes a lot more time than normal autocad drawing. rendering time for graphics can be in minutes.

 

[Ubrales]

The easiest upgrade would be to add RAM. Check the motherboard manufacturer's manual and determine the max RAM and type. Then install.

Some laptops have one RAM module at the rear of the case and the other module under the keyboard (on some Dell Laptops). Follow directions and you will do fine.

32-bit OS is limited to 4 GBs of RAM.