Why Do Mobile Workstations Even Exist?!

Gaming laptops and hardware have come on a LONG way recently, they're now just as if not more powerful than mobile workstations... so who the heck even buys these things now?? Why would you want an Intel Xeon or a Nvidia Quadro when you can get a Core i9 or a GeForce with just as much power? After receiving the Dell Precision 7550, I ask myself the question and proceed to shout at myself about it.
Dear all!! - I have now developed and released the worlds most comprehensive FREE computer benchmarking test for Autodesk Inventor with a global online leaderboard. See the announcement video here • InvMark for Autodesk I... and check out the leaderboard here invmark.cadac....
Support the channel by visiting the Autodesk store links below and subscribing/renewing your license using my link!
Tech3D Paid Autodesk Store Links!
Current Discount Promotions - bit.ly/Autodesk...
All Autodesk Products Page - bit.ly/Autodesk...
Tech3D Paid Autodesk Store Links! (Aus & NZ)
Current Discount Promotions - bit.ly/Autodesk...
All Autodesk Products Page - bit.ly/Autodesk...
------------
Support the channel and support yourself, Pluralsight free trial here: pluralsight.pxf...
------------
FACEBOOK: / tficadtips
TWITTER: / tficadtips
------------
Need personal help? Please don't send me a message requesting 1 to 1 support, I'm unable to sustain that across thousands of people, instead please post questions on: forums.autodesk...
------------
Outro design by TGODdesigns: / tgoddesigns
#Tech3D #Autodesk #Laptop #Workstation #PC

[@Neil3D]

Dear all!! - I have now developed and released the worlds most comprehensive FREE computer benchmarking test for Autodesk Inventor with a global online leaderboard. If you're interested in checking out which workstations are at the top for 3D CAD, see the announcement video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpTOZJ-sqrKFoK8 and check out the leaderboard here invmark.cadac.com/#/ A couple of people have mentioned early on that my comparison between the mobile Quadro RTX 3000 and the GeForce 2070 should have been with the mobile 2060 instead? Because the 2060 is much closer to the RTX 3000 on paper? Just FYI, my reference to the GeForce 2070 was from an architectural angle. What I mean is there is only 1 mobile Quadro based on the TU106 chip, and that TU106 chip was manufactured at its best to be a RTX 2070, that's the highest varient and that's what its capable of, but the only Quadro varient based on the TU106 chip is detuned with much lower specs. Yes that does put it closer on paper to the RTX 2060, but Nvidia produced around 11 products from the TU106 chip with the RTX 2070 being the highest performing and fastest varient. Most end users expect the Quadro to be the best and fastest, so I used the best and fastest product based on the same TU106 chip as a reference just for discussion.

[@robertbrooks4637]

so they binned the TU106 chip and the shitty ones become quadros? Basically paying for the special drivers

[@neubauerjoseph]

Thank you for doing videos like this. I feel like many youtuber just focus on macbooks or gaming laptops. Its nice to see someone talk about the workstation parts and also I know your video on the Alienware m15R3. I like your opinion on that you said you can buy a gaming laptop and it will be much cheaper. Also I am using a Apple imac 21.5 4k model to do my office work. it has i3 3.6 GHZ quad core 8gb DDR4 ram, Radeon pro 555X graphics and 256 SSD and I added a USB 4 TB apple WD storage drive. my Alienware is M15R3 with a 10750H CPU 2.8 GHZ and 16GB DDR4 Ram, 1.5 TB SSD and 2070 Super 8GB GDDR6 and with the cooling station I am able to overclock at to the desktop-class graphics. But I only spend $1811 on it. Dell told me to get to that level on a mobile workstation I would have to spend like $7,000-9,000. So I want to say TFI a big thank you. Also I just subscribed to your channel.

[@BIMforInteriorDesign]

Hi, with regards to Siemens NX and Solidworks viewport performance: I doubt that "the software would recognize the card and than throttle the card". The thing with Quadro drivers is that they are developed with OpenGL in mind. They enable all OpenGL functionality, which isn't enabled in GeForce drivers. When a software developer implements this function and than it doesn't work with the driver, it can slow the viewport performance by magnitude, that even brute forcing doesn't help. Few years ago I ran into problem with Blender viewport with NVIDIA cards. I read bug report with developers responding, basically saying that GeForce driver doesn't enable backface culling of mesh (it's OpenGL function), Quadro drivers did. This meant that GeForce was basically rendering twice the number of faces (even those facing away) - which obviously decreases viewport performance drastically. I also ran into similar kind of thing with wireframe viewport with BricsCAD. Quadro is not optimized for Blender nor BircsCAD - it's just some standardized OpenGL functions which are not implemented in GeForce drivers and which are used in these 3D viewports. This can easily lead to crippling performance with GeForce drivers. I am by no means expert in this field but from what I gathered coding graphics drivers and viewport software is quite hard with many things that come into play which can cause non-linearity in performance. That means that even RTX 2070 cannot brute-force it's way to better performance than lesser quadro card. Some software - I guess NX and Solidworks would fall into this category - has custom made optimizations in Quadro drivers. I know for sure that AutoCAD does, I read a paper few years ago. These optimizations were some anti-aliasing, dynamic input window optimizations and so on. Nothing earth shattering but all these things compound into better viewport performance. I think 3DS Max has also some custom made viewport optimizations in certain shading modes. It's true that fir some applications (I would say most) there's no difference between the drivers (eg. Revit uses DirectX so there is absolutely no need for Quadro driver). You give a good practical and knowledgeable advice on your channel but I think you should do more research into this before you say stuff like "NX maybe throttling the card". Keep up good work! Tom

[@not_my_noodles]

Seems like he was off the mark saying that the difference in the drivers was negligible. It's not that the P2000 was anywhere near as powerful it's just that the 2080 is poorly optimised through its drivers because they focus on DirectX and not OpenGL programming.

[@BIMforInteriorDesign]

@@not_my_noodles It really depends on which software you are using. The difference might be negligible or it might be great, it's really hard to generalize.

[@kaasis85]

I don't use my HP Zbook for 3d work. I needed a business grade laptop that could also play games decently well. I just don't like the flashy designs of gaming laptops and the questionable build quality of consumer grade laptops in general. A fantastic keyboard, decent screen, all metal build, great security features, nothing bends or rattles and a 3 year warranty as a standard. HP business support was first rate when my elitebook needed a new battery, which I got in two days.

[@enoszenosz4397]

Great vid. I work in data and analytics and use a Dell Precision m6800 that is turning 8 (!) years old but still can run everything I throw at it. The build quality is as new. The hinges are still solid and the touchscreen is as new. Of course it was a bit pricey, but, as a proper mobile workstation should, it earned its price back in a few months. Not to mention that it has never let me down, no matter what model I tortured it with. It just works. And this reliability is what differentiates these workhorses from show horses.

[@HURSAs]

Most of the time for every hardware, professional or not, there is a good optimized software, professional or not. Sometimes optimizations are integrated in the software tool you use, for example different viewport optimizations in AutoCad, Maya, 3ds Max, Rhino, Revit, Blender, Archicad, SketchUp, Adobe Suite etc. have some specific improvements for working with detailed geometry or high res effect simulation during modeling process. Other 3rd-Party softwares ( render engines for example ) have even lower level API optimizations in libraries - VRay Render optimizes for Intel Embree, nVidia Optix / CUDA / RTX / NVLink shared memory etc.. , Blender Cycles uses Optix / Cuda / RTX too, Radeon ProRender optimizes for Microsoft DXR DX12, Vulcan, OpenCL. One of many different improvements in Quadro vs GTX drivers (or Instinct vs RX cards) is how they operate with Half 16-bit and 64-bit Double Precision instructions, which find implementations in many CAD engineering softwares. Using xRefs/Proxies/Instancing/"Out of Core" methods optimizes Memory budget in cases of limited RAM/VRAM. You can find optimization even in your Operating System - for example enabling the option in Windows 10 Graphic Settings called Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling gives room for improving render performance in GPU Ray-tracing engines. I've had experience using $ 15K Pc Workstations, which were performing way more unresponsive than my cheaper 2K home build, because of bad settings or problems with specific for the hardware bad implemented driver inconsistencies. Most of the time the price of professional hardware sky-rockets cuz of the "software/hardware features" it offers but without correct setup the features may become bugs. The theme is endless, but the moral of the story is to know your software/hardware tool and its "environment" at least as good as you know your professional skills. If you don't - start learning or find/hire people to do that for you.

[@HoomanM]

This is a sort of information you get no where but in TFI. Thanks Mate!

[@Michallote]

I love this kind of videos! I am a student as of right now, however I am part of a AeroDesign team and we run very heavy CFD simulations (at least too overwhelmed for any laptop) so I ended up building my own PC. The media is just too flooded with useless and overly repeated Gaming reviews, but nobody actually talks about what's important when you want to develop work and are at a budget

[@Neil3D]

Thanks man. Doing my best over here! Hopefully this new direction to the channel will allow me to create more stuff like this if I'm able to get more laptops and hardware in for review!

[@serajeemdtoriqularman5955]

I'm also aero student. but when i was ask my fellow senior they just told me to buy gamming laptop then until i realized that some of them our professor using ThinkPad with all unknow mysterious hardware. btw ThinkPad p1 or p17 with Quadro t1000 just fine for students from any aero or mechanical related major. if you are in US buy dell precision don't buy ThinkPad it will cost more but here in china dell cost 2x more than ThinkPad.

[@ifiwantyoutofeel]

@@serajeemdtoriqularman5955 whats an engineer 😳🤔

[@adeebmomen4541]

I am also an aero student and I went ahead and got the Legion 7.

[@scentilatingone2148]

Thanks man. It boils down to liability which you need to fall on a big corporation like Dell, Invidia instead of one's own small business. Well said mate!

[@blaze9525]

Nice video! Two supplemental answers: 1) Policies against buying desktops in large companies where this is the best “business” laptop supplied with leasing contracts 2) Mobility matters and again policies against buying “non-business” laptops in a large company In other words thank the way laptop leasing, testing, and supplying in large companies works for why these exist. There could be other reasons, but I’d be shocked if this isn’t at least 90% of why they do.

[@bigbmessiah]

100% Agree....I work in the IT dept of a large electrical/mechanical engineering company, and we have as a standard kit for our engineers a customised Dell Precision with i9/32GB/Quadro ,,,,,reason is SUPPORT. 4 Year Onsite Next Bus Day warranty , the Quadro card is Officially supported with both Autodesk, Solidworks and ANSYS (and they do support fast when needed). I have had Dell travel to Outback Queensland ( 1000+ kms from major city) to replace a part within 24 hours. Our engineers must have the tools to do the work, and they work in some rather unique and harsh environments....Dell mobile workstations FTW.

[@dr.benjaminbird7631]

You get the same enterprise support on a Dell gaming laptop.

[@bigbmessiah]

@@dr.benjaminbird7631 this is true.....if you pay for it. Just dont try to get enterprise support for Solidworks or Autodesk if you dont have a supported video card.

[@davejoseph5615]

Went from M4500 to M4800 to M7530, all bought used. They seem like solid units to me.

[@PreciousAlpschindler]

These day mobile workstations remain the only laptop that are modular. Non-soldered ram and a lot of m.2 slots. They also more durable than a regular business laptop these days.

[@paulbarnett227]

It's about optimisation. Similar hardware but gaming and engineering are very different use cases so are setup differently in the drivers.

[@Milly4L2000]

my work gave me a dell precision 7720 to keep because it was “outdated” is has the an i7 and Quadro p3000 gpu with 16 gb ram. it has windows 10 pro but can run heavy duty games at max settings 45-60 fps. but i have the system optimized very well.

[@robsshedoftech6457]

Picked up a Dell 7760 with the 16GB A5000 Quadro. Easy to upgrade to 128GB of RAM using standard SODIMMs so not as expensive as Dell. Also have 6TB of NVMe storage. Why? I virtualise lots of servers and PCs as part of my IT work - the RAM and storage means I can have up to 12 or 14 running at any one time.

[@chloedegurechaff1941]

I bought a used presicion 7710, with the i7 6820, and a m4000m. I got It from a company liquidating their assets. I picked it up almost a year ago for 600. I specifically wanted a workstation, mainly because I had an older Hp elitebook a few years back. and just loved the build and feel of it. And sadly HP's modern elitebooks have gone soft and less powerful. Then I had discovered Dell was still making proper workstations. big, heavy, extremely solid machine. Plus mice nipples are the best. I don't do anything that requires this hardware, hell I mainly game on it. But I have yet to find another laptop that has this same feeling, while still being able to keep its powerful hardware well cooled. And that makes it well worth to lug this heavy thing around.

[@randallthomas5207]

Engineers buy them, to run AutoDesk in the field. I can gather data, import the data into an AutoDesk product, and generate models in the field, and then I can verify, the model is a good representation of the world, before I leave the site. Engineers, and Surveyors are well paid, and the client charged correspondingly. But most Engineering Contracts are fixed rate. If you are working at a site 5-hours from the office. And if you have to send a crew out to get a few more points, you can make a large dent in the profits.

[@tsmemphi]

Just one further note regarding the usage of Xeon processors in such a mobile workstation: Indeed for most users, the i9 is the better choice, but there are some scenarios where the Xeon is the much better choice. Production designers who use AutoCad software and work on huge 3D models such as car manufacturers etc. appreciate having such a notebook in particular for home-office use. But to load such models takes sometime hours to render it correctly, so the memory is under heavy use and gets therewith a critical component. With ECC support this issue is limited and the users never will defect memory. Another scenario is developers (also researchers) who deal with AI and prepare software for servers. Since Xeon processors are the standard in servers, it's a good choice to ensure its most effective also during development. I mean, the application will always run on the server, even when developing it on an i7 or i9, but you might notice a performance difference in i7/i9 and Xeon processors. In particular, the max single-core boost of Xeons is usually much higher. On dedicated processing servers, this is a serious issue with a dramatic effect on performance because many high processing applications have critical processing stages as single-threaded implementation. At the rest of what you said regarding the use of mobile workstations and why Dell is in business the best way to go, I just can agree. The service of dell is outstanding and the toolbox to check the notebook in case of problems is from another planet when you compare it with Lenovo or other manufacturers. And by the way, you usually get more in a Dell workstation for the price than in a Lenovo, that's why I'm happy with Dell (precision notebooks) since 2009! But in contrast to Acer etc., it's indeed a huge price addon, but for business, it's definitely worth it.

[@breakdown7153]

I just discovered your video after finding out my work is issuing me a Dell precision workstation. Not sure the model yet but wanted some background as I know nothing about these. I have extensive knowledge in DIY desktop building and repair but zero on laptops. Glad I found your channel and I greatly appreciate your take on why these exist. Cheers

[@Ivlodded]

In IT we work mostly remote and need power none the less. Dell and HP offer rental laptops/pcs, and if we need more power, we just get a new set of 100 laptops as an example. No need to buy/sell, always the most power available, and no stress if something breaks. We use Dell and are very happy. Allthough our boss cheaps out on ram all the time...

[@Ivlodded]

For our setup in the office we run on optiplex minis

[@MatSmithLondon]

Love how you just had a massive argument with me. Calling me "mate". You don't even KNOW me! :) Jokes... good video. Informative. Thanks.

[@christopherbeddoe406]

Our work shifted to 100% mobile computers. I do different types of modeling but nothing super intensive to require a dedicated multi cpu workstation. They spent $4k on a laptop that would have been comparable to $1200 desktop. To each their own. The advantage is IT has 30-40% less devices to manage, and everyone has a computer they can take with them for remote work. Works out ok. The flexibility is a huge advantage.

[@davidolsson]

I personally prefer laptop due to running between meeting, engineers love them for showing customers in the field and on site work.

[@Bajicoy]

Mechanical engineer here, I get so embarresed using laptops, maybe mine over the years have just been really slow/noisy, they really like ramping up and running background programs when idle for a couple minutes. Maybe because of the background antivirus that seems to get stuck on prebuilts. A couple weeks ago my laptop died in the middle of showing some people an assembly and still will not boot. Not that anyone should not get a laptop because CAD is still mostly single core (maybe needs a couple spare cores for background tasks) and really only needs a gpu a few times better than integrated graphics. It's good value in theory. I just lucked out.

[@davidolsson]

@@Bajicoy then they hear you working. Keep that mate sound on and fans on high brother!

[@dr.benjaminbird7631]

You aren’t running anywhere with breeze block of a laptop.

[@davidolsson]

@@dr.benjaminbird7631 New CAD laptops arn't like the old Dell M6800 bricks. No problems running a designreview and most of our meetingrooms have a usb-c or charger cable availanle in need. 😎

[@malcalaalignet]

@@Bajicoy i use inventor, advance steel and FEA, well i use Dell Precision 7760 fully equipped, i'm independent, i love that workstation, no problems with that, i love showing it to the clients because is a demonstration of power, i have two, 7740 , and 7760, because if some accident occurs with one, i use the other as backup

[@Frostainum]

Dell warranty is the thing to buy dell laptop insted regular gaming laptop.... Something happans and warranty will deal with it like in 1-3days! if you have regular laptop it will take 2-4weeks...

[@davidolsson]

My manager ordered new HP workstations but took them with 2060 cards instead of the quadro due to 2 dollar cheaper per month over a 4 year lease period. Pray for our mech team...atleast for the coming 4 years.

[@Neil3D]

That is absolutely soul crushing to hear. I dread to think what kind of CPU you ended up with...

[@davidolsson]

@@Neil3D Dear sir, thank you for asking. They are kitted with a i7-9700K. 64 Gb (DDR4-2666) memory (like we need that much...not) a fancy pantsy 1 Tb (PCIe NVMe SSD TurboDrive) because turbo makes anything faster....at least in the 80's. All wrapped up in a HP Z2 Tower G4. And if not specially ordered with the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 you could get it with a Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000.

[@tempacc9749]

GTX980m and M5000M are technically the same cards. I downloaded dell drivers and changed inf files for gtx980m. As a result, Siemens Nx activated all graphics features(shadows, perfect edge quality etc). I thought I made it. However, It sucked when I click section view, wireframe view, etc. Quadro cards has something else that I can't find out.

[@mfrankel8321]

You are so correct. If you are sourcing a laptop for your business, Dell is definitely the way to go.

[@user-jvhuvuyvjhgjhkjhkgkjhg]

I was aircraft structure designer 10years ago when using quadro card as design tool no problem at all. We loaded 3d parts over 1 hundreds at least for design work. At that time nobody doubt the performance of quadro. These days, at my work still load over 100 parts. Well, I feel rtx2080, 3080 cards are enough no more need quadro I think. Maybe NVIDIA knows well this issue, so they are focussing New market AI, Machine learning... etc instead CAD. So the reason why NVIDIA abandon the name Quadro..

[@AK0SKA]

Spot on! I did IT for 25 years... Spot on!

[@Ranu8299]

I got one of these HP mobile workstation when my company decided to phase them out in 2022 as they were 4 years old, and yes they were standard issue, i just increased SSD to 1 TB

[@sooxpix]

TBh the best video explaing the existing of these workstations !!! thx buddy

[@NormanF62]

The MSRP is fantasy! A fully upgraded Thinkpad W550s in 2015 cost an eye popping $3,000! I was able to acquire one for around $75 in 2022. Expensive laptops depreciate rapidly and one would be a fool to pay thousands of dollars for a new one up front. If they held their value, that would be another discussion altogether but suffice it to say the only people apart from corporate IT departments who lease them are the reviewers who drool over them. Certainly, their initial cost is justified but bear in mind these all eventually are going to be upgraded to the next model. Product churn in a word, isn’t kind to the mobile workstation.

[@NeillPowell]

"RAM is RAM" - officially you are a farmyard-mechanic

[@XanarchistBlogspot]

Solid video. I buy these even as a non professional used. They are rock solid even 5 years old. I picked up a Precision 7520 with 32 gbs of ram a m2200 graphics card. It will be reliable, it is upgradeable and repairable and for 280 shipped is a no brainer for me to learn Blender on. Also looking forward to no thermal throttling.

[@NormanF62]

The age old question: do we need a quad core processor or can a dual core processor suffice in a mobile workstation in 2022?

[@T12blk]

Hello Please, i need some help. I'm planning on buying either 3080ti mobile or A5000 mobile for roop . I've found 2 laptops, but the A5000 is cheaper than the 3080ti. Please advise me which is the best gpu for deepface or programs like roop unleashed.

[@perkristoffersson4153]

The question I'm asking myself currently is whether the mobility is actually needed now that we have software allowing us to sit in our cubicles while in a meeting with the entire world. Maybe for our next update, build our own workstations while keeping the laptops as backups and for when one is absolutely required (when someone absolutely must work from home for valid reasons)

[@DeletedContent]

Great video and a video about actual mobile workstations. Other videos show MacBooks or Gaming Laptops. Those are not workstations and should never be called workstations. Great video.

[@darwinjames2000]

Great video. What do you think of the Lenovo P15? I9 tenth gen 32g NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 w MaxQ.

[@Neil3D]

I need to be sent more recent Lenovos to make a call on that, I've been unimpressed with every Lenovo I've come across so far for multiple reasons usually involving bad build quality or dreadful thermal control. But that was a couple of years ago, can't speak for new ones today unless I get sent one.

[@BobHaff-lo8hf]

Please condense your TMI. First I need the latest CPU & Video card on a new laptop. Then I need a few video drivers for SolidWorks AutoCad etc. Service and support is needed, which makes me wonder if MSI can do that. After purchase I wonder why the new expensive laptop is not all that much faster. Then the work begins to go as fast as possible with what I got.

[@RayhemXD]

Imagine walking into the cad office with this graphite black sharp as fuck RGB weapon that is a gaming laptop. Slap it on the table, boot it up and you've given everyone in the room a seizure because of the sheer number of lumens coming from you keyboard. In all honesty i think people would rather just use a "professional" looking laptop even if the performance per pound isn't as low as a consumer gaming laptop

[@Ethan-ck6iz]

Wish they made more laptops with the gaming hardware but without the lightshow, I've bought a Thinkpad T15G for this reason, RTX 2080 super and an i7 in a mobile workstation shell.

[@Jesuosivwi]

This may sound funny, but I only just found out about workstations as a full fledged laptop category yesterday and I had to do more extensive research on the topic. I must say, this video came at the right time to obliterate my ignorance in this regard. Thank you so much for this video. I'll make sure to always have an Nvidia qaudro... At least until my needs changes. I am forever grateful for this information sir.

[@chrisose]

I spent much of 2016 trying to decide between the available gaming laptops and mobile workstations. When I finally pulled the trigger on a purchase in 2017 it was for an HP ZBook17 G4 with Zeon & Quadro chipsets. At the time the ZBook was cheaper then other similar spec machines. I was also 20% lighter and small enough to fit into a Pelican 1495 case with enough extra space for a 3d mouse and trackball. (not going to drop that much on a machine then cram it in a backpack) I figure I can get a couple more years out of this machine, especially considering how crap this year has been for business. When I do purchase another machine it will definitely be another mobile workstation.

[@troillandford7679]

Spent almost 3k on 2 gaming laptops, both of which only lasted less than 2 years each. Should've just bought a workstation dammit

[@dr.benjaminbird7631]

Lol why didn’t you just buy a desktop?

[@chrisose]

@@dr.benjaminbird7631 Because most of my time is spent away from my office and it is not worth it for me to have two machines and two subscriptions.

[@kevboost]

This was the content I was looking for. Super informative and underrated channel.

[@thevisi0naryy]

What a great video! Subscribed

[@mick06]

Guaranteed support and compatibility with Workstation Apps, also Enterprise level business support compared to 12 months warranty on gaming laptops.

[@dr.benjaminbird7631]

Dell will quite literally sell you a gaming laptop with the same enterprise support.

[@claeslind9532]

16:00 so lenovo is the worst of the workstations? I’m trying to decide which brand to go with.

[@nami1540]

Great video. But what SHOULD I get as student? Is an integrated Vega 8 enough?

[@alexkzy5210]

I'm getting a Precision for work and we got a 1200 € discount from Dell. I have the theory that the prices on the website are just there to scare away people, that are not aware of Precision being not for them.

[@ShainAndrews]

LOL There is a reason you are on the other side of the sales fence. Start playing with the big boys we know if we throw a price down you will never pay more than that. But we are the ones setting that price... so who has leverage? Look boss person we got this discount! You're a winner, your company is a winner... and we just gave you a discount off a list price we pulled out of nowhere. On hardware we ship tens of thousands every day... leveraging economies of scale.

[@magnussorensen2565]

The Nvidia theory at 13:00 is confirmed by a friend who managed to fool SolidWorks into believing that his laptop had a Quadro card in his laptop with hacked drivers despite being a regular gaming card.

[@oscarbear7498]

Intresting

[@Numian]

Well put...

[@wesleyknox8687]

just because you know the spec of a computer that's does not mean you know about being a cad modeller, I'm a digital modeller that needs a Mobile Workstation, yes they are not as fast or as good as there desk top counterparts, but when I have a short term contract, or sorting out data on the fly in a lock up, where they are milling a clay model, then its invaluable, i'm no IT guru, I have not a clue about inventor, its Alias all the way, P.S. its not always about how fast it is its how you use it ? yes that's a life lesson lol....

[@ritishgupta5201]

What would be a good laptop for engineering students starting out with Solidwork and AutoCAD? Under 2000$, Can't do a desktop because I travel a lot , but If you or anyone could suggest me anything I'd be very grateful

[@kevinc.4575]

In your same position, I got one of the "cheap" workstations from HP. Maybe going for a gaming laptop you could get a better graphic card, but I'm actually satisfied with my choice. Solid and robust, no fancy led and all the features that really matter. Mine is a Zbook 15v

[@BIMforInteriorDesign]

With regards to ECC memory - it doesn't do "something in the background". With standard RAM sometimes it happens that a single 0 is flipped by accident to 1 or vice versa. This corrupts only small part of the code. ECC RAM prevents this, I am not sure if it eliminates corruption completely or just reduces it. These flipped bits can cause for instance wrong pixel color in jpg image or on screen. I think it happens very rarely, but can cause problems with HPC computing or large databases where data consistency and uptime is critical. I am not an expert in the field but I think for almost all engineering work this would not present a problem. I would not insist on having ECC RAM for standard engineering workstation. Tom

[@Neil3D]

Fair enough but flipping ones and zeros is "doing something in the background". I also don't profess to understand the extent of what ECC does and doesn't do, I know it doesn't do any harm to have it and it isn't that much more expensive, but whatever it does it does it passively hence in the background. That's the extent of what I meant there.

[@BIMforInteriorDesign]

@@Neil3D Yes, you are right. Diving deeper into this might be a good topic for another video. Unfortunately it's probably out of scope of one-man channel to do statistically significant testing of ECC vs non-ECC memory when working with mid to large size engineering models. Tom

[@masternas45]

i really appreciate this kind of content, i finally started a career as a Jr network tech and it requires a bit of traveling to each client and im looking for a decent laptop to take with me on the go, i feel like im currently in a bit of a grey area/ middle ground with my laptop choice as im fresh out of school into work and i dont have the craziest budget but at the same time do my work i dont NEED crazy performance as in i dont need the best mobile gpu/cpu but i do need a GPU but something just strong enough for me to run simple editing software perhaps with ease and handle multitasking in the background. Even if i had a high budget id feel ike im overspending as i have a nice desktop at home that i daily and i feel like if i get a super high end laptop it will defeat the point of my desktop and im wasting money in a sense. going into these smaller details helps me as there are plenty of good used laptops that makes sense, but all of the different prices betweent workstations and "gaming" laptops have been stressing me and this helps me look around with more confidence. earned yourself a sub

[@corneliuswowbagger]

Why do people play games on laptops? I have no idea. Engineers always think they have all the compute intensive applications. I am retired now, but I used to do field geology, but I was also the remote sensing guy needing to process or reprocess large Lidar datasets composed of tens sometimes hundreds of millions of vector points in point clouds with ArcGIS in the field that generally means in a rural motel room in the evening in preparation for tomorrows fieldwork hence I needed a mobile workstation. Fortunately as PI I could decide what I needed myself.

[@sparkybruce]

I have two 7750's maxed out with the Xeon W-10885M's , RTX5000's , 128G ram , 4K screens , 2x 1TB class 50 SSD's and 1x 2TB ssd. One is a works machine that I got in February and the other is my own machine which arrived last week which is the same apart from I have ECC ram in mine and now the 2TB drive is actually a PCIE gen 4 (so the new class 40 drive is faster than the class 50 gen 3 drives). Comparing the two machines my own one actually gives 10% better CPU and 5% better GPU results in Cinebench which I think is down to thermal differences between chips.

[@ricbattaglia6976]

Hi, for Autocad, 3ds and Photoshop is better xeon or i9 11gen? Rtx A5000 or 3080? I'd like temperature and noise lower and so i think A5000.... thanks. Architect Riccardo from Milan.

[@elshazlio]

Excellent video. Great perspective.

[@eleftheriosmerkouropoulos1549]

Thank you for one of the MOST honest opinions! Thank you again!!!

[@agtugo9197]

Big companies buy it, when I was a mechanical designer I did not care. If you need ansys simulation there are servers. Licenses are "floating" so it does not matter where the simulation runs.

[@Neil3D]

Ive not come across anyone yet who runs the Ansys simulations on a "server" - most companies run Workbench which is client based. Not saying it doesn't exist, I'm not an Ansys expert but I've only ever been exposed to client based Ansys which has been perfectly fit for purpose. Ansys havent tried to upsell to a server solution either to my knowledge.

[@michaelbelt8946]

What do you recommend for 20GB point clouds? I was thinking about a Tong Feng gaming laptop?

[@user-cx2bk6pm2f]

Well that's it in a nutshell, no? Price and performance are the superficial debatables. The real value comes from stability, reliability, and the rigorous verification testing absent from gaming machines.

[@vladimir_k_bestplayerna1217]

Wasn't it once possible to flash Quadro drivers onto GeForce cards, getting the best of both worlds, but then Nvidia caught on to this and stopped it? Do AMD cards behave similar to the GeForce in CAD software? Where they greatly under-perform compared to quadro cards that should be much weaker.

[@TonyRios]

I've done an airfoil cfd on 8 gigs and it worked but i wish I had more

[@familiarshadow1]

I was issued a precision laptop for work. They're fine, but I do find that the user interface to be horrible. They compress the keyboard from full size to be able to fit in a number pad. (Are people using these for data entry or something?) The off-center keyboard and touchpad is also quite annoying. Fortunately I don't have to actually use it 'portably' very often, but I have no idea who the number pad models were designed for. Fortunately, Dell has plenty of non-numberpad precision models with sane UX experiencies for engineers, though.

[@ShainAndrews]

Use a number pad all the time. I must be one of those silly engineers that works with numbers.

[@harisnaufal3259]

I use numpads often too

[@neubauerjoseph]

Speaking to linus tech tips, sure he know a lot about tech and computer but he knows very little about auto cad or Maya . what he knows is mostly gaming stuff and other things such as video editing. I used to be a Autodesk maya student so I was taught by the instructor who told us and also I went to a class taught by a Maya programmer what to look for on a workstation. they talked mostly about graphics and different graphics stuff. This was back then in 2006/2007 they could only do software raytracing. They said the only way they can do raytacing is if you buy one of those expensive server GPU that can cost $20,000-100,000. But now days the GPU are able to do some of the things they used to like render chain link fence or do other things such as difficult lighting effects.

[@saqibmansoor1094]

Hey! Im building my first computer, and i was about to place a rtx 2080 super... but after this video, im a bit confused. For my work, i use range of software, autocad, revit, maya, 3ds max, vray, unreal engine, lumion, and ofc, adobe suite... would u recommend going for a Quatro instead?

[@Neil3D]

No confusion was created I was crystal clear :) If you're building your own computer for you, buy whatever you want! There are only a couple of applications which slow things down on a GeForce card, but none of those you've listed do that, so you're good with a 2080 Super :)

[@saqibmansoor1094]

Awesome! Thank you.

[@lowrck]

so i recently got one of these from dell as a replacement for a system that was still under warranty but was a rare variant that they no longer had replacement units or parts for. i was given a list of available systems and asked a friend who, unfortunately for dell, worked as a mechanical engineer and used one of the previous gen precision 7540s and recommended i take the precision 7550 as a replacement. how bad is it for the laptop that i mostly do gaming and occasional photo and video editing work. the previous machine was an xps system and i'm used to consumer grade or maybe prosumer laptops. side note: @TFI mine doesn't have that weird line on the top of the outside of the display. is that a plastic window or is it just a weird line from wear?

[@mod3064]

Hey Neil, desperately after some/any advice on a workstation to handle point clouds I’ve been told 128gb 256gb RAM & Quaddro...? Cheers !

[@murphy1138]

I have one of these. They are clunky laptops. Battery lasts about an hour, it’s really heavy and cumbersome. No web cam for some reason and the Mics don’t work. Swapped it for a Dell 5410 with an i7u and 32GB . I get on better with it. The 7550 is waiting to go back to my stock at the office.

[@ErwinMeulman]

Nvme Raid1 dual slot. Battery swop. Hyper-V. Quadro for OpenGL ? ShapeManager DirectX > Rtx/Quadro no difference, turn of vsedges. I hope there is a 2.5gbe realtek chip on board. I now use two 2.5gbe dongels in p2p-mode to have high speeds.

[@Neil3D]

I don't think so, I think its just a 1Gbps Intel PCIe based ethernet card with WiFI6. Looking through the options I can't see anything to swap in a different LAN card. That's a deal breaker for you but it wouldn't be for me, our company LAN infrastructure is still all 1gig switches and people working from home will be on WiFi or using 10/100 LAN ports at home, so that wasn't a consideration for me. But I will keep that in mind when I do the review of this!

[@Bajicoy]

I have found that with more complex models and assemblies in solidworks, inventor, fusion that at a certain point the models become corrupted and I need to give up the progress, restart the program, roll back to the last save because the corruption might prevent saving and redo my edit. Sometimes even the model is permanently corrupted to its core and must be scrapped (although this is very rare, happened on solidworks last month with a 12 part assembly). I am wondering if ecc memory would help. This recently happened to me yesterday with fusion because it seemingly lost track of all the local files in some assemblies and would not save.

[@Neil3D]

I don't profess to know a lot about how ECC RAM works but I don't think it impacts on local file corruption, we still occassionally get that in the office on systems with ECC RAM. I might look this up and if I can make sense of the information, I might do a piece on it if I can

[@Bajicoy]

@@Neil3D thanks so much for the fast reply! Yeah, gathering data on it is a pain because the errors are so random/rare, but knowing it still happens with ECC memory is a good reassurance. Looking forward to more of your videos whatever they might be!

[@jedibusiness789]

If you buy Dell know this. There’s NO USA support, your routed to India. Laptops are built in China, towers built in Mexico. Once your payment clears, you order is confirmed, Dell creates a shipping tracking number before it’s built and you cannot cancel the order. The tracking number is US based and Dell cannot tell you where computer is between China and third party tracking. If Dell cannot ship you computer in the allotted time they will lead you to click button that automatically extends their delivery date. if you refuse an extension they route you back to India for additional delays, but keep in mind there’s a federal law that states your internet purchase must be delivered within 30 days if not you can demand a refund. My order was a nightmare. Missed three delivery dates and 3 CAD classes. And only through enormous pressure I put on Dell with Federal Trade Commission, was able to cancel the order and get a refund. I will not work with Dell again.

[@ShainAndrews]

Except when I call for support I speak to US support. Every call, every person. Orders? I can tell exactly where the hardware is in the fulfillment process. My account team will parse out custom builds onto a separate order. Off the shelf stuff ships yesterday. Custom stuff ships when it ships. The difference? One of us must be running a legitimate business, with legitimate support. I wonder who...

[@cezarras]

You are saying thay profesional is more reaible basicly wich goes down to some driver update and software... But really somone has megerd this? Or it's just marketing talking?

[@GorefeastDrummer]

My work just bought this for my Graphic Design and video editing. Would you say it will be proper for this purpose?

[@presenceofeden2949]

That is what is build for

[@THEDIG1000]

As an engineer student I would buy a mobile workstation but I would know if they can support editing software such as lightroom, photoshop and premiere because I'm an amateurs photographer and videomaker. I didn't find something on the net about this so I was wondering if someone has ever tried to use these programs on this type of pc. Thanks for your help

[@blackeesh463]

These will murder any adobe program in 4k without problem. It's way overkill for that purpose.

[@ijustfelldown]

Now I'm worried Nvidia will one day cut a deal with Autodesk right after I buy a new geforce based system only for autodesk to ban geforce cards the next day.

[@ShainAndrews]

How frequently do you encounter these unfounded fears?

[@gunayenis]

Just Got precision 7750 laptop, we will see the result

[@user-cx2bk6pm2f]

I have Nvidia P2000 on my workstation spec'd in 2018. It's a great card, fantastic really. However, yes, there are more powerful Quaddros available.

[@juanhidalgo7043]

I disagree the xeon chips are specifically made and approved by autodesk. As a professional engineers I use the xeon for Revit and Cad design. I use Xeon 8 cores 16 threads 32 g. Ram and 5000 video cards. If you are. Gamer then go for i7 or i9

[@Malagent]

They exist so that I can buy them when they are a generation old for pennies on the dollar.

[@alfredkay3210]

You never mentioned the Storage capability of a Dell Mobile workstation over a so-called gaming laptop

[@hzrnbugsie]

Yes, my Dell 7750 comes with 4 Nvme M2 slots

[@TheBlankmediams]

I got a dell precision 7730 because company have dell as main IT supplier. I only got to pick a choice of 2 models and picked the most powerful available Edit:laptop works fine but could do with a faster cpu. But you can always do with a faster cpu.

[@Neil3D]

Yea this is as fast as it gets on the Intel mobile platform right now... at least for now. Not sure how it stacks up against AMD Ryzen mobile on single threaded workflows but AMD aren't an option in high end pro workstations so it's a mute point for that.

[@goethe528]

10:10 Inventor? You mean ONE of your n cores then?

[@smellysam]

Some of us work on ships. At sea...

[@Infinit3Enigma]

I love this video! Good information! But I have to say...solidworks cfd is not real cfd, most people I know who do real cfd use fluent or starccm+ or in house codes. So there cfd "benchmark" was kinda a joke. Also a little tidbit, my old x99 desktop system solves most of my cfd simulation faster than my newer gaming laptop so I dont think anyone would use a laptop for real cfd xD.

[@kshitijkumarrajhans1752]

Are these good for engineering students

[@wei-paihuang3648]

Great video. So it's more about business liability.

[@treymahaffey852]

Interesting you keep mentioning gaming. Mobile workstations are not used for gaming. Who? Literally who would buy a mobile workstation for gaming? They would have to be mental and not very smart. Kind of like someone making a video to that effect.

[@TonyRios]

The IT department gave me this workstation for work, it's really great, the 4K display is awesome. Unfortunately, we don't use Inventor for CAD they prefer 3DX which sucks but I use my own license. Can you write off CAD software in the States?

[@booe34]

If you own a business then I believe you can amortize the license fee.

[@bimbox1215]

Neil - How do we get you a system?!?! please reach out. We want to send you a system. b

[@zzKirus]

This is the beautiful result of competition AMD is bringing to the industry. Intel forced to cannibalize their enterprise Xeon line up to keep up on the mainstream platform competitive. I like it. That's wild about the RTX lineup being throttled by those engineering apps though. Doesn't surprise me though Nvidia is shady.

[@codentechie47]

Hi. Did you prefer any laptop for mechanical engineering Softwares like Solidworks ,hypermesh, Ansys , inventor , Fusion 360 etc..under 1000 dollars ? If you know please let me know ? I'm from India.

[@Neil3D]

Under 1000 is a tough one, I don't have anything that I can recommend that I've used as they're still sending all the laptops to gaming channels so I don't have any here. But see if you can find a Lenovo Legion 5 or HP Omen 15 with a AMD Ryzen 7 4800H in for under $1000. At that price you'll have to compromise on both the GPU and RAM and see what you can get for it, but shoot for the Ryzen 7 4800H. I haven't tested it though, but on paper it looks very very good.

[@codentechie47]

@@Neil3D Yes sir. I know it's difficult to choose under 1000 dollars . But for me, Even 250 Dollars is'nt affordable . I'm using HP Elitebook 8470p with 8 GB ram only . I only use Fusion 360 with it . Now it's malfunctioning due to CPU issues. Anyways thanks for your support and say some products.

[@RayhemXD]

@@codentechie47 Realistically you would genuinely have to cough of the money to get something to run professional work loads. The engineering sector makes a lot of money, and from past experience, bosses in this sector are more than happy to cough up the cash to get a high end workstation for the job it needs to do. I have no idea what this sector looks like in india but the underlying trend should still be the same. You buy a work station, that's built for the task you need it to do

[@codentechie47]

@@RayhemXD Yes bro. I'm very much interested in 3d Design. And I want to be an Industrial designer. In India , there is scarcity of Industrial designer. They're so many Designing jobs exist but most of us don't able to affordable as to buy an Mobile Workstation or a PC for design . I'm now studying in 2nd year of Mechanical Engineering. At the end of my final year , I hope I would definitely buy an workstation laptop.

[@codentechie47]

@@pritammohan1513 Yaa. Thanks Sister for your reply . I'm so confused. Now I clever . I will try to buy that for my workflow . 👍🤝🙏

[@christopherwilliams9418]

I bought a Thinkpad P15 because I wanted something that would be upgradable in the future rather than buying something I'm going to use for a few years and then throw away lol I haaaate that everything is soldered on so many laptops now Sometimes I regret it though, I moved up from a T440p to my P15. Don't get me wrong, it's a great laptop and does everything I need it to, but I miss having a 14 inch laptop. It just travels so much better even at the thickness and weight of a P-Series Thinkpad. I absolutely would have gone for a P14 or something but they're all soldered now.

[@adamlester1717]

SICK LENOVO BURN! ;)

[@durimister]

righ now mobile workstations super actual in my Ukraine.. work under bombs in the shelter are perfect with dell precision, or even intel macbook pro under bootcamp. because of 3ds max.

[@MrDelgrigorov]

Dell workstations are the worst examples of a workstation actually. They are with regular laptop parts inside.

[@alicer396]

Thanks god I find this channel :')

[@kevboost]

How much did you end up paying for those laptops?