Wildfire Laptop

I'm looking to buy a new laptop to run Proe wildfire SE on and want to spend under $2000. I have looked at several laptops and I am having trouble finding ones with proe certified graphics cards. Does anyone know if the graphics cards listed as certified on ptc's website are the only compatible ones with wildfire? Is there a seller who provides laptops configured to run with wildfire? Are any of the nvidia geforce cards compatible? Does anyone have any brands in particular they would recommend?



Thanks,



Aaron

I have COMPAQ Evo N800v Pentium 4 laptop and it costs just 1800 US dolloars. I run Wildfire on it and it has no problem with graphics card.



Israr

Thanks for your help Israr. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

My $.02...



You are goig to have trouble finding a laptop with a certified graphics card under 2K.



Most computer manufactures have diffrent classes of comptuers and will only put a workstation class graphics cards in their workstation class computers. Take Dell for example, they make the Inspiron, Latitude, and the Precision.



Inspiron only comes with intergrated graphics (probably Intel graphics controler)



Latitudes primarily come with intergrated but there is one that comes with a GeForce and one with a Radeon



Only the Precision models can be shipped with certified graphics cards



you can easily get an Inspiron or Latitude for under 2K but the bottom line is that laptop graphics capabilities are much less that that of a desktop



The only way you could get a Precision for under 2K would be to make sure you get the bare minimum of everything it comes with and after tax and shipping it would still go over 2K.



I think you will find a similar scenario with most other OEM.



I hate making any suggesions for uncertified hardware because your results are bound to vary a little bit from one person to another (there are so may variables with PCs). In general most people with new computers can run Pro/E but a lot of laptop cusomters end up having to run in win32_gdi mode. I strongly recommend getting a laptop with an actual graphics card (opposed to an intergrated card)



Hopefully this will help you in making your decision.

I'm looking at the HP ZD7020 with 17 display and NUMERIC KEYPAD. Intel

I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop with a NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 Go (Mobile) graphics card, and Wildfire SE works great on it. Just make sure your drivers are up to date. Check with the graphics card manufacturer, not the computer manufacturer or Microsoft, for the latest update. These laptops are really cheap and I would recommend you check them out. My particular one was under $2000 and has a DVD/CD-RW, USB 2.0, 40 GB hard disk, 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor.

I appologize, I was wrong about the Inspirons.



Most of them come with ATI Radeon cards and 1 or 2 of them have the GeForce as an option. 1 or 2 of them only come with intergrated cards.



A lot of our customers are running Pro/E on Latitudes but I was initally trying to answer your orgianl question regaruding laptops with certified graphics cards.

I saw a new Sony laptop the other day in my local sony centre and looked pretty good for your money, but didn't really look into it too much.



I know it had a 17 widescreen and came in the same weights as the apples do and have a snazy blue grey colour to them



Might be a good idea to look at Sony if you have time.

I've got a Dell Inspiron 8600 with the 128mb graphics card. It has no problems. I dont know how much it cost. I probably don't want to know.

I have a Compaq Presario 2500 with a 64MB ATI Radeon card in it and it runs wildfire no problems, got it for around $1200 after rebates. In the past I have found that the ATI cards in the laptops seem to be the best, ran it on an Inspiron 5000, Armada E500, don't expect screaming performance.

The latest HP/Compaq that is certified is the nw8000, last time we priced it was just over 2k, we have deep discounts, and it equipped with memory and such was around $2800.

I have found that as one other chimed in most ProE laptops (certified) are high end and start over 2k.

It is hit or miss with laptops if they are not certified, never had any luck with gateway...

BTW stay away from Sony and the wide screens with ProE for some reason we have had no luck, and always seem to get the error out of Video Ram.

TOSHIBA Satellite laptops. <1800.00, Nvidia Go video chips 512+ram runs Wildfire just fine with XP Pro. I have the widescreen 17

May be limited for truly large assemblies but otherwise a really good deal.

Aaron,



I have been using Dell's M50 and M60 which I buy from their Dell Outlet
Store (refurbished). These have been great machines with
usually 3 years warranty.

My M60 was picked up for $2300 about a year ago. The same machine new
was around $3800. The Specs; P4M 1700, 80 gig HDD, 1gig
Ram, cd burner, UGXA LCD, 128Meg QuadroFX 500. I have seen units as low
as $1400. The key is the video card. I 've have other laptops with
geforce cards that limits on how many windows of Pro you can have open.




Early in the morning is when you will usually the largest selection



Hope this helps



Dave