Laptop for OpenGL

Hi,

Right now I’m looking for a new laptop. It is intended to be used for presentations, when our salesman shows our CAD software suite to potential customers.

Since our CAD softwares use OpenGL the laptop should support it well. We don’t really need an overpowered video card but we need a reliable one.

And what we would really need is some support too. We already have a laptop with a quite good video card (a FireGL) but the drivers from AMD/ATI can’t be used and we are supposed to use the constructor’s ones. Unfortunately, they haven’t been updated for ages, and we have the same problem with others laptops too. This is very frustrating because although they d’ont work that bad, we can’t use these PCs to their full potential.

So, could someone please give me some directions about laptops with good OpenGL support (and frequently updated drivers if possible) ?

I would recommend a laptop with an NVidia Quadro FX 360M, 570M or 1600M depending on your budget. IMHO nvidia has better OpenGL support and the Quadro cards/drivers are optimized for CAD/DCC.

N.

I’m running a Apple MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, which has NVidia GeForce 8600M GT. If you don’t want OS X it dualboots (supported by Apple) fine into Win XP and OpenGL runs perfectly. Currently have NVidia nv4_disp.dll version 6.14.11.0134 driver installed.

I’ve had no problems with this machine. Had tried to get HP 8710w workstation laptop (similar specification to the MacBook), but they couldn’t deliver in time! That machine has Quadro 1600M, and according to my supplier they now have stock, so that would be another option. Again, you should be able to use the NVidia supplied drivers with that, which, as mentioned above generally have better, more up to date support for OpenGL.

j

The HP 8710w seems fine, thanks you for your advices.