[slapshot30]

Hey guys, I'm looking at getting a Sager NP9150 and I'm stuck on what graphics card to get. I want this to last me four years of college. Yes, I know that in terms of gaming, the 7970m is a beast and eats everything in its way. The holdup is how well it will do with programs like AutoCAD and Revit. Nvidia has CUDA which is widely supported by many of these CAD program. Apparently AMD has a similar offering called OpenCL but it doesn't seem like its very well supported for CAD and modeling programs. Would it be unwise for me to skip out on Nvidia and CUDA for the 7970m?

Or, on another note, is the CPU more important for most of these programs?

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[Mr.Pie]

for CAD programs a moderate GPU is good enough unless its a workstation style GPU like on the Thinkpad T series.

A powerful CPU IMHO is more important

 

[Jixr]

Yeah, any card will do fine, I've never heard anyone ever say, "man, if i had X card instead of Y card, I could work so much faster!"

my old college laptop with a 9800m still runs fine, and still renders fine as well, albeit much slower than my new desktop, but its not going to hamper you down much.

Good luck in your CAD schooling, and remember, everything you learn will be useless in the workfield!

and yes, CPU performance is much more important that graphics. Autocad is actually very friendly with old systems ( for 2d work ) and you only really need a good rig for revit for really heavy live-textured models, which you probably won't get into at school.