xps M1530 with autocad

I couldn't find any usefull info from the search.

I have a XPS M1530 with
T8100
3GB mem
320GB HD
1400x900 screen

Im not using it very much latly and my little sister which recently started a technical study on the university needs a laptop which can handle 3D programs like Autocad, solidworks so she has better use for this laptop then I do since I mostly watch movies on it now and use it for office programs.

My question is do Autocad, solidworks etc work on the M1530. I know its great laptop but I just wanne make sure that those programs function fine on it since I have no experience with those programs at all.

 

is this 15'' ? I'm not sure but I'm worry that you have connect it to external monitor. 15'' is small. You can work on it but how long? Or maybe my eyes aren good as was in the past

 

hehe this is not a thing about inches she needs a laptop. The question is do the required programs work

 

yes, these programs should work but will be laggy due to lack of proper OPENGL support, you could softmod it or something

 

They'll work perfectly fine. My dad uses Solidworks professionally and has models with 100's of parts and it runs perfectly fast on his Intel GMA950. He uses autocad as well, but not as much and it runs fine.

 

Those kind of programs are heavily CPU dependent even though they render 3D things. They will run just fine on that computer, as the T8100 is a decent CPU.

 

thanks think its time to say bye bye to my precious then. Think ill buy the 12" samsung NC20 as a replacement for when I need a laptop on the move.

 

Your 8600M GT GDDR3 in your M1530 is good enough to do CAD apps well. I've dealt with all kinds of cards, FireGLs, Radeons, Quadros, GeForces when they run these professional apps. Take it from me; I am an 8600M GT 3D Max/Maya/Sketchup/AutoCAD/Photoshop/Premier Pro user. I use all of these, everyday. They run completely fine.

Buy a Dell Precision with a Quadro FX card if you really want model your works professionally and that you really demand graphics viewport-priority performance, and yes, like someone else has mentioned, true OpenGL support. Softmodding them would be good also. I'm probably trying it again later to confirm this.

Overall, you're fine. For 3ds Max, I'm only worried about CPU power more than the GPU itself - rendering can really be a pain especially when you assign Vray as your renderer.