Top End Mobile Workstation

Hi all,

I'm looking to purchase a decent workstation which will be used for multiple CAD software systems.  It's going to be used in the showroom but also used to present to architects and developers on site and in their offices too.  As much as there are offerings from PC Specialist, MSI and the like I am drawn to the BIG TWO . . . Dell & HP.

I've had a few Dell Precision in the past and they are great work horses.  However with the spec relatively comparable I am drawn by the quality of the screen.  The HP ZBook 17 G4 has the option of having a screen with a resolution of 3840x2160.  Although this may seem a little OTT this is ultimately a sales tool so I think we'll opt for that.  The bigger plus point is that the DreamColor screen (their American spelling, not mine!) is colour calibrated at the factory meaning that the colour representation is even better!  

I'm going to opt for the i7 variant even though I am a fan of Xeon.  The reason?  Both processors have the same number of cores and a very similar clock speed.  However the Xeon takes more juice to run and hence will deplete the battery a little quicker than the i7.

So, just for your reference (PS . . . in years to come we'll laugh at this spec) the spec is:

HP IDS i7-7820HQ 17 G4 Base NB PC
17.3 inch UHD (3840x2160) Anti-Glare DreamColor LED UWVA enabled for Webcam flat
NVIDIA Quadro P3000 6GB Graphics
16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 2400
512GB M2 SATA-3 Self Encrypted OPAL2 Three Layer Cell Solid State Drive

I'll obviously have to run a few benchmark tests between this, my dual Xeon machine and my little i7 NUC in the new year :-)

Cheers
Minch

Have you got this yet Nathan?

One thing with these Hi-Def Screens is maybe to reduce the OS resolution when you are with customers when rendering on screen as it could still be slow otherwise given the very large pixel dimensions.

HP Zbook G4 in depth review HERE

Sorry to re-visit this post but with components moving so quick wanted to see if anyone had any good recommendations for laptops mainly to run ArtiCAD.

I have average knowledge on computers and previously used MacBook Pros, stuck bootcamp on and it's always done the job well. But we keep on getting busier and rendering is becoming a bit of a bottleneck now seeing if I can get more speed.
Would still really want a laptop as I do visit site often and sometimes do designs with customers in their homes.

I was thinking a budget around 2.5k-3k, but any information on what people have or think would would be appreciated!!

Thanks guys

Ultimately Luke you need to get the most number of cores. There are some great mobile chips out now. Obviously if you're basing your choice on render speed primarily then still go for those top chips with the most cores/threads. Question is do you need a workstation or just a fast laptop?

^^ What he said. If buying a laptop, undervolting can give you a serious performance boost, equivalent to a generation change in processor. Throttlestop is a really good utility and you can change TDP limits to increase time in boost mode. If you do this, you probably would need to run off mains power but you can always create a different profile to run in battery mode. Anything you can do to trim render times for free, is a good thing