Running pro/e 4 with non certified graphiccard (laptop graphiccard)

[ptc-5233762]

Hello,

i already checked the hardware requirements page for pro/e 4 (http://www.ptc.com/partners/hardware/current/support/proewf4.htm) but it did not answer my question. First i would like to explain my current situation.

A friend of mine (who is a student) wants to buy a laptop. Her budget is about 500€. With this you can get a good mid range laptop with a graphic card, some "not so bad" cpu and some memory but not a high-end laptop with "certified hardware" as stated at the hardware-support-page above. In this price class you have to decide which component (cpu, graphic or memory) should be as well as possible. If i want a really good cpu i have to accept a poor graphic card. So she asked me which component should be as well as posible. Furthermore pro/e is not her main usage for this laptop. She only wants to try out pro/e, play with it and maybe do some student design stuff. Currently she does not want to be a pro/e power user.

And now it gets tricky. Which laptop component should be as well as possible to get the most performance benefit using pro/e? She could get one of the following combinations:

- core i7 cpu with 4x2,4 GHz Quad-Core and a onboard graphic card, 4 GB memory

- core i3 cpu with 2x2,3 GHz Dual-Core and a "gaming" graphic card (nVidia GeForce GT 635M, 1024 MB), 4GB memory

These are some edge cases (good cpu and bad graphic or not so good cpu and some graphic). The question is which one will provide the best performance benefit. I dont really know. I dont have the insider informations to evaluate the performance benefits of a quad-core cpu in comparison to a dual-core cpu. Or if a "gaming ready" graphic card is able to provide better performance with an Dual-Core i3 instead of a top cpu (i7) with a really bad graphic card. I dont even know if cad applications can fully use multi core cpus nowadays.

The "buy the most expensive laptop with some certified hardware" approach does not work in this case because she is just an student. I did some research about laptops with a FireGl or QuadroFX card but they cost about 1600€ and more.

Well... i hope you can help me. i wasn't able to find any other resources about this topic.

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[JonathanHodgson]

OK, the easy one first: two cores is nice, more than that is pretty much a waste. What's most important is single-thread performance:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

A quick i3 should be more than enough (we run here with Xeon W3550s, scoring 1370) but make sure of the exact model of processor. Just saying "i3" or "i5" isn't enough information.

The graphics card question is more difficult - really the only way is to search for people who are successfully running Creo with the exact graphics chip you're looking at.

Searching this site for "onboard graphics" gets a few results that suggest it might work, and there's an option "graphics win32_gdi" that might help, but I can't make any guarantees. I think there's more chance of compatibility with some sort of separate graphics card, but in performance terms the onboard graphics on some modern CPUs are more powerful than many dedicated GPUs...

It might be worth a post in the main Creo discussion area, rather than here in Community Help - unless a moderator could move this thread, please?

Memory isn't too critical unless you're doing really big models and assemblies, or running analysis such as Mechanica (Creo/Simulate). 4 GB should be fine - less is not really enough for Windows these days, anyway!

HTH.

[JonathanHodgson]

Thank you, that moderator!

Free bump...

[ptc-5233762]

Hi Jonathan,

thank you very much for your answer. Its very useful to know that pro/e 4 mostly benefits on single-thread performance. I think a fast i3 should be enough. It helps that my friend dont have to waste money for a i5 or i7.

I dont believe that someone has some experience with pro/e and a "nVidia GeForce GT 635M, 1024 MB" grapic card. There are too many different cards and hardware combinations on the market. In my point of view the graphic card support seems to be a lottery game. But now i can tell my friend that she has to decide between a cheap or expensive (certified) laptop.

[Dan_Harlan]

I agree with Jonathan, go with the i3 and the nVidia graphics card. I have lots of experience through the years with ProE/Creo and nVidia cards are consistently reliable and stable. I haven't used that specific
nVidia card, but have used other nVidia low end laptop chips and though the performance was an issue, stability and reliability of image never were.