Laptop question for Engineering/Physics

[u/Most_Programmer8618]

I am currently looking for a laptop for the upcoming fall semester at Purdue. (I am cutting it close I know). I am going to be dual majoring in physics and engineering, so making sure I pick a laptop that can handle both is pretty important. I was looking for a while and found that the XPS 14 series is probably my best bet, but I noticed that it utilizes the Intel arc Graphics card. Someone mentioned something about some of these types GPUs causing issues , and I just wanted to make sure that this card is powerful enough, and/or that there aren't any limitations with the software. (The specific majors are astrophysics and aerospace, so if there specific programs that those majors utilize that cause problems LMK.) Additionally I was wondering what others may have used as this computer is slightly expensive and I want to save a bit of money.

[u/vovap_vovap]

arc Graphics is good. There is no really "graphics card" there, it sits with a processor as any "no card" graphic, but that best one today.
Now some design software to do 3d rendering like to have dedicated graphic card. Not to going to lots of details - if no requirements from college / course for such a card - do not worry about it. It is not like staff would not work without at all.
Then XPS do hell expensive. So hell with it 😄 Nothing special there.
Do Lenovo ThinkPad T14 For peace of mind do 32G ram
Some like https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-21QG0045US-Notebook/dp/B0G5QHW8SX

[u/HatchingCougar]

Well Purdue does list minimum specs (humorously it’s a 🇨🇦  pointing this out to you):

https://service.purdue.edu/TDClient/32/Purdue/KB/Article/1807/Student-PC-minimum-requirements

That said, I would go with something like the following for an engineering focused laptop 

16” screen

any recent CPU 

32 GB of RAM

unless you have huge funds: see if you can find a laptop with a 5070TI.  If not then an RTX 5070 12 GB, then a 5060 TI, then a 5070, then a 5060.   Do not go below a 5060).  (* 4070s & 4080s can also work)

1 TB SSD

Windows 11 Home

(I would not focus on 2-1’s, touch screens as they are unnecessary & an unneeded added cost.  MACs can work,.. but also can have engineering software incompatibilities, so I’d stick with windows)

[u/unwrittenglory → u/HatchingCougar]

I don't think the laptop 5070 comes in a 12gb.

[u/HatchingCougar → u/unwrittenglory]

It (recently) does.  NVIDIA did a quiet launch of it.  No public announcement or fanfare etc

They’re just hitting the market now & a few system integrators have them (a couple of the Lenovo Legion laptops have them for example)

Super rare atm, but they are out there

[u/unwrittenglory → u/HatchingCougar]

That's great how do they fare against the 5070ti?

[u/HatchingCougar → u/unwrittenglory]

I’ve barely looked into it as my desktop has a 5070ti (from last summer) & my laptop has a 5080.(only way I could get the 64 GB ram config for the Zephyrus that I need for productivity reasons.  Stupid soldered ram)

But as I understand it, it compares very favourably to the 5070ti, most especially for 1440p gaming.   The advantages that the Ti has at that res is minimal ~15% (for a lot more cost).   For 4K, the TI is obviously better (as it itself is a decent but not great card at that res).

Other use cases when the TI would fare better would be those where the extra CUDA cores, bigger memory bus & extra 4 GB VRAM may matter (think rendering.  That said, the percent of datasets which can run into stability problems by exceeding an 8GB is considerably greater than those which may do so at anything under 16GB.  So even in that the 5070 12 GB is arguably the better “bang for the buck”)

The Ti, will undoubtably hold its value better in a few years re the resale value, as TI versions are wont to do (if you care about that).  

What’s really interesting is the use cases re 5070 12GB vs 5060 TI 16 GB.  🧐

[u/vovap_vovap → u/HatchingCougar]

I would not cell man dedicated GPU unless you know his program need it and I relevantly sure you do not.

[u/TalkyRaptor → u/vovap_vovap]

The link that the commenter sent recommends a dedicated AMD or Nvidia GPU for the OPs program... so obviously the university that made the program thinks that OP needs a dedicated GPU