W530 for 3d cad design

Thinking of buying the W530 for 3d cad work (SolidWorks). I am no laptop expert so I have some questions:

1) I was told that win7 will not use more than 8 gb of ram, and anything above is a waste of money - true or false?
2) Will I notice a difference with the K2000m vs the K1000m?
3) I was thinking of the i7-3820QM

My economic situation is this. I can aford to do any option, but I really hate to spend money on something which is going to give me little or no benefit.

 

1) Absolutely false. Full stop. It'll use as much memory as you can throw at it (the W530 can fit up to 32GB of RAM).

2) Right now, from what I've read, both perform roughly equally (or in favor of the K1000M due to some quirks from nVidia).

3) There's no reason to waste money on it. Literally the only difference between that and the i7-3720QM is the tiny increase in core speed, something you won't notice whatsoever. Use the money towards a SSD or more RAM instead, something you will notice in Solidsworks.

 

• Get the lowest i7 quad-core.
• Get the FHD 1920x1080 screen.
• Get the default 4GB RAM stick. Replace it by 2 x 8GB 1600MHz RAM sticks like these.
• Get the 500GB 7200rpm HDD.
  
  • If you need the optical drive, buy a mSATA SSD (say, 80GB) for boot/OS/apps drive and use the 500GB HDD in the primary bay for storage.
  • If you don't need the optical drive all the time, replace it with an UltraBay HDD caddy adapter like this one, move the 500GB HDD to the UltraBay, buy a SSD (7mm, SATA 6Gbit/s, as large as you want and can afford) and put it in the primary bay as boot/OS/apps drive.
  • If you have practical questions regarding Windows 7 restore/reinstall, come back and ask.

  ​
• Get the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6300 WiFi adapter.

 

1) Windows 7 Home Premium x64 will not use more than 16 GB (OS limitation), you'll need Professional or Ultimate 64 bit to use more than 16.
2) Yes you will, but it all depends on the renders you do
3) Don't do it as privatejarhead suggested, spend that money on RAM or an SSD, you'll feel those benefits more than a slight CPU upgrade

 

I got the K1000M and base processor (and plan on using it for SolidWorks this fall). It's certified, so it should do the job. Definitely get some sort of SSD though - the speed boost (even in everyday operations) is dramatic.

 

I got the 3720 and K2000 (4gb ram / 320 gb) and it comes with win7pro ... so you can upgrade it better if I am correct

 

Thanks for all the input. it really helped.

 

1) Ultimate Version support up to 192 GB RAM.

2) Yes, about 30% better if you modeling a car engine, but for any small parts, there are no different what so ever, even a Intel HD 3000 will work smoothly at most time.

3) i3 will do the job for modifying a car engine, i7 will be good enough for future purpose.

 

i3 vs i7 for autocad was discussed in thinkpads.com. Against the conventional wisdom that i7 does not matter that much, the gurus there suggested i7 since the time saved by it over two years will be worthy the money spend.

 

1. I have mine running 20 GB. If it comes with Win 7 Pro x64, it will be able to handle up to 128GB theoretically. Right now, the max you could configure is 32 GB with 8 GB RAM sticks. when 16 GB hit the market, you would be able to do 64 GB. Just make sure it is at least Win 7 PRO. And it must be x64 to utilize more than 4 GB of RAM.

2. I have the k2000m, and it is very nice for CAD work. I've used it with Inventor, Revit, and now am learning solidworks. However, if you won't be doing hugely complex/large models, you would be better off

3. The i7-3720 would probably be adequate, I went with the 3820 because I made other concessions and had a set budget for what i could spend in a use it or lose it type situation.