Check my spec - CAD and casual gaming laptop

[jacmur692]

Hi all,

I'm looking to make a purchase for a new laptop and have spent a lot of time looking at the usual brands you would find in your local PC shop until i stumbled across PC specialist while searching the web.

I am after a laptop that will serve all my basic college needs in the new term. It needs to be able to run AutoCAD '13 and also Catia which i plan to teach myself on to help with my future career. I do plan to do a bit of casual gaming, games such as skyrim although. I figured the graphics would need to be relatively good amyway as i would primarily like it for CAD. It would be nice to play games in better quality then todays consoles

Anyway here is the spec i have created atm. Budget is preferably £900-£1000.

Chassis & Display
Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-3230M (2.60GHz) 3MB
Memory (RAM)
4GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 2GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB KINGSTON HYPERX 3K SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 555MB/sR | 510MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
320GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD3200BEKT, SATA 3 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Memory Card Reader
Internal 9 in 1 Card Reader (MMC/RSMMC/SD: Mini, XC & HC/MS: Pro & Duo)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Network Facilities
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
USB Options
3 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT AS STANDARD
Battery
Optimus Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (5,200 mAh/76.96WH)
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Lead & 120W AC Adaptor
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2013 (1 License Key Card)

My main concern is whether or not the i5 cpu will be good enough or even soon outdated. But let me now if this seems too overpowered/underpowered and changes you would recommend.

Thanks for the help in advance

Jack

 

[Thornblom]

Why not check out the Optimus V? The new Haswell CPUs is a great upgrade fromIvy.

 

[Yamikotai]

For AutoCAD you're really going to want 8GB rather than 4GB RAM.

CPU-wise I highly recommend going for the i7-3630QM rather than the i5-3230M. It's only £60 more for a good 80% jump in performance for 3D stuff like AutoCAD.

Why not check out the Optimus V? The new Haswell CPUs is a great upgrade fromIvy.

Also a good point.

 

[jacmur692]

Why not check out the Optimus V? The new Haswell CPUs is a great upgrade fromIvy.

I'll check it out, didn't release it had a better cpu as my knowledge on cpu's is very little

For AutoCAD you're really going to want 8GB rather than 4GB RAM.

CPU-wise I highly recommend going for the i7-3630QM rather than the i5-3230M. It's only £60 more for a good 80% jump in performance for 3D stuff like AutoCAD.

Thought i already had the x2 4gb RAM selected there, thanks for the heads up. A lot of 3d Cad will be carried out on this so i will check that out, thanks

Adding the i7-3630QM what sort of quality could I expect from some of popular games about today.

 

[Yamikotai]

Adding the i7-3630QM what sort of quality could I expect from some of popular games about today.

The extra cores won't have much effect on the gaming for a while; until recently games barely took advantage of the extra cores, but with both the new consoles having 8-core APUs, it is likely that any new games will make excellent use of multiple cores.