Laptop specs: 16 GB RAM with shared graphics card or 8 GB RAM with 4GB dedicated graphics?

dimitris_mertzis

High all,

my dilemma is as simple as it sounds. In terms of overall Onshape performance, which of the two directions would noticeably outperform the other?

Thank you in advance

NeilCooke

Dedicated graphics every time. Onboard graphics never have the horsepower despite sharing RAM. 

S1mon

@NeilCooke The exception to this would be Apple Silicon. The graphics engine built into the M1 (and now M2) chips is pretty amazing, and the shared RAM makes it that much faster and more flexible.

NeilCooke

@S1mon agreed - my M1 Pro gives 800m+ and 300m+ which is equivalent to a high spec nVidia card. 

nick_papageorge073

If you will be working on larger assemblies, or, multiple sessions of smaller designs in OS at once, the 8GB of ram will 100% run out. I run out all the time on my M1 Air which has 8GB. Since you are using this professionally, I'd highly recommend 16GB minimum, plus a dedicated GPU (if on Windows), and 16GB minimum on an M1 Apple system.

My work issued laptop is a 4 year old Dell precision with 16GB ram and 4GB Quadro GPU. It was struggling on my assemblies. I upped the ram to 64GB with an Amazon upgrade, and it was a night and day improvement. The extra ram only comes into play with large designs. Small stuff runs fine on a Walmart computer.