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.