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General discussion

Dell 700M or Dell 6000 to use 3D MAX, ACAD and Photoshop...

Apr 10, 2005 4:06AM PDT

I am about to buy a notebook. I had a Toshiba Satellite 5205 with a 15' screen and Pentium 4m Processor. The Performance was great but it was bloody heavy. I use lots of image editing and 3d modelling software like Photoshop, Acad and 3D Max and most of the times I end up having them all open and exchanging files from one to the other. This makes me think of a powerfull computer with loads of memory in it (min. 1064) however I want to make my life easier by choosing a ligther one. A con of the 700M is the lack of graphic memory this worries me. Im not too concerned about the size of the screen since I can always have an ext. monitor. Am I being to ambitious by wanting small, light and powerfull? Is the 700m powerfull enough to deal with the workload of and architect/designer or should I play it safe and get the 6000 and deal with the weight and size? Thanks for your advice...

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I'll write yes. Here's why.
Apr 10, 2005 4:39AM PDT

Those applications worked on machines from 2 years ago. Today's machines have more RAM and more speed. Only your patience may have been reduced in those 2 years.

Bob

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The issue is not size but graphics
Apr 10, 2005 5:14AM PDT

You need not only the 6000, but the 6000t or whatever they're calling the one with dedicated graphics.

The 700m uses Intel Integrated Graphics (called different things based on whether it's a Dothan or a Sonoma Centrino system). This will not provide you with the graphics capability to run Autocad or 3ds max satisfactorialy.

The 6000 has available the ATI Radeon x600 if I'm not mistaken. It's a really nice graphics card that runs on PCI-Xpress, and it will be much better suited to waht you want to do.

Other than that the machines are very similar performance-wise.