Lenovo T420 or W520 - cad working (architecture)

Hello. I'm going to buy a new notebook. I am now confident that it will thinkpad. The problem is as follows. Should I buy the cheaper T420 with intel card and immediately eGPU to render the work at home and 2d (archicad) and sketchup at the university. Or maybe W520 with quadro 1000m and in the future eGPU for better performance? I read about some problems with eGPU T420. I am no longer sure. What should I buy. Sorry for my english.

 

For CAD work you probably would appreciate the extra power with the Quad Cores that are on offer with the W520. While the T420 is a decent machine and have the unofficial option to put a Quad Core inside it gets pretty toasty during load so I don't particularly recommend it (I tried this myself) so you're stuck with the Dual Cores really. Plus most people with the W520 agrees that the FHD screen is a really good display, not much can be said in the same respect with the T420 HD+ screen i'm afraid. After doing graphic design works using many notebooks and desktops with better displays along the way I do kind of regret choosing the T420 in that regard personally.

Either way both machines should handle eGPU fine as they pretty much share the same chipsets inside. I haven't heard of any recent problems since Lenovo addressed the Memory Allocation during their BIOS updates for all the Sandy Bridge ThinkPads.

 

15" 1080 quad core is a must for your kind of work
I felt claustrophobic with the T420

 

I thought so. As for the W520 is 1600x900 I thought about that too did not bother my eyes. I had the opportunity to work on FHD. More space is more comfortable, but everything is so tiny.

 

I have a t420 with 14 inch 1600x900 screen and intel hd graphics. At work I use a HP Z600 CADstation with ridiculous power and when using Solidworks I can barely tell the difference between my work comp and my thinkpad. ProE(CREO) runs pretty smooth too. The only time I appreciate my work computer over my home laptop is when I have large assemblies.

I have two 22 inch monitors at work so going from that to 14 inch laptop sucks at first but I end up getting used to it.

 

True. But switching to a larger external 1080 monitor will not need resizing of your windows or rearranging of your workspace. I was getting really impatient with that when I was using the T420.

My T420 had i5 dual core, and the quad core I have in the T520 is far more responsive, something I place more importance in than, say, a 3 vs 4 minute render speed difference.

 

After owning the T61p then the W510... I've decided to get something smaller in my advanced years to ease my travels. Working on a plane is nearly impossible with those and the trimmed down speeds of the latter when using a manageable 90W AC adapter is horrible... At any rate, it's a trade off. If traveling was not a concern, I'd get the T/W520 in a heartbeat! IMO the competition doesn't rise to the occasion. If you need to be moderately mobile then I'd get the T420...

 

At the moment I am a student and I thinking I will not make too advanced projects on the 1 year (but I'm going to additional training house, mostly in rendering). Unless I decide on the W520, because I dont travel by plane too much. But I will choose HD + because for some time I will not have the possibility of connecting it to the 24-inch monitor with a resolution of FHD or greater.

My configuration is:
2630QM
4 Gb ram (buy another 4 later)
500Gb hard disck (ssd soon)
HD+
Quadro 1000m

Theres possibilty to change GPU and CPU later in the Lenovo service? I mean for some more powerfull quad and quadro 2000m?

And some shame quastion for the end ;p. Anyone play with quadro 1000m in BF3 and ArmA 2. I have no too much time for games (omg i dont remeber when i was playing last time ), but it will be nice if i can run it smoothly on the medium settings in native resolution or HD.
Cheers.

 

Unfortunately you're stuck with the graphics card that's integrated on to the motherboard, but that doesn't stop you choosing a better external card if you do decide to go with the eGPU setup. The CPU however you can always change using the Hardware Manuals available from Lenovo's site. Though I think they will only be marginal gains if you opt from the base Quad Core processor and considering the huge cost for tiny increments of speed its probably not worth it at this time.

 

Too bad the quadro is integrated. Thanks for usefull answers. Anyway im thinking abiut the eGPU so thats not a problem . HP EliteBoook don't allow me use intel hd so eGPU is impossible... I will get my w520 after christmas i think... In my country i cant even taste it before buy (only for order ;().

I have another question. What bag.backpack (most the backpack) do You recomend for w520? It will be good if this backpack have place for dslr too (5d + max lens 135). Budget max 150 USD.

 

The Quadro is discrete, but "integrated" in the sense that it's effectively permanently soldered onto the motherboard. Optimus may be useful if you want the eGPU to output to the internal display.

 

When W520 working on the battery the quadro GPU is using, cus i read the CPU is working on 800 MHz im worry about the quadro.