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comparing tohsiba S55-C5274 and HP ENVY 15-k163cl

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fpirz

Member
the two laptops are approximately the same price.
the toshiba is at staples, on sale.
the hp is at best buy, refurbished.
both come with 12gb ram and 1tb hard disk.
biggest difference between the two is that the toshiba has a core i7-5500u (2 cores) cpu mark 3938
while the hp has a core i7-4710hq (4 cores) cpu mark 7878.
while cpu benchmarks are nice, the real question is will there be a significant difference running GD?
other differences, the hp comes with win 8.1 while the toshiba comes with win 10
(not currently supported but from what i've seen in the forums it works...)
both have 1366x768 graphics which fails to meet the required minimum...
[my current laptop does as well, but it still runs...]
the hp has an intel 4600 graphics processor while
the toshiba has an intel 6000..

anyone have a guess which will work better?

Frank Pirz
Media Conversions LLC
 
bigseb

bigseb

Alibre Super User
If it were only down to the processor then I would definitely go with the 4th gen. Way superior even though it chugs more juice. And if you plan on using Keyshot then don't even bother looking at the 5th gen.

But the Intel graphics... eish... I have my reservations. If it me then I would go with a dedicated graphics card (directx). I believe I read here that someone is using Intel graphics with Geomagic Design and it works but I would chance it.
 
T

TylerDurden

Alibre Super User
Both of that class laptop are years old tech at this point.

IIRC, the recent Toshis are not easily upgraded, even ram may be un-upgradeable.

The HPs were olny a bit better in that regard, and ram maxxed at 16MB, which is just good enough for now, but maybe not for the near future (ram is cheap).

I didn't want to feel like I needed to upgrade again next year. I spent twice as much to get a machine that should be good for this work for a few years and almost all major components upgradeable / swappable.
 
bigseb

bigseb

Alibre Super User
TylerDurden said:
Both of that class laptop are years old tech at this point.
Click to expand...
:shock: Tyler, that i7-5500u was only released in Q1 2015...

I know different people have different needs. Personally I don't believe that laptops need to be chucked once they are a certain age. If it works, it works. I still have my Acer Aspire 7720 with Core 2 Duo 1,5Ghz processor and 4Gb RAM and Nvidia Geforce 8400 card. She still runs beautifully. Obviously slower than my I7 beast but gets the job done. Seven and a half years old now.
 
F

fpirz

Member
Bigseb
I share your mindset. I'm running any number of deskside, dedicated, systems on WinXP..
Normally I buy my systems in parts, assemble & load software on my own.
because of Windows poor design features it needs to be wiped and re-loaded every few years.
mostly on active systems that get used to try out 'new' software...
for a system where I loaded the software in the first place, I've got everything I need.

my current laptop is ~5 years old, but I got a core i5 (cpu mark about 2000), 4Gb ram and 640Gb disk when I bought it
[that was cutting edge for it's price point..]
but lately it's behaving badly.. symptoms of needing a wipe and re-build.
while I can download the drivers I need from ASUS, and I already have win7 disks, there's no
guarantee that I won't run into a problem when I re-load the system. It came loaded
[yes I have restore disks, but i'd rather build from scratch...]

given all that, what I want is another system, faster, more ram, more disk
that I can load up with software and setup as a replacement (not all that easy either...)
then I can re-load the older system and if I have a problem it won't put me off-line &
in a panic until I get it back up..

Frank Pirz
Media Conversions LLC
 
A

adamflyer

New Member
In my opinion a SSD is a must. Boot times are drastically faster and everything from checking email to starting programs is noticeably snappier. Use a SSD for your OS and programs to reside on and a HDD for file storage. If you get a laptop that only has one disk slot see if it has a spare PCIe slot that can take a SSD and make sure it supports booting from it and you are in business. I bought a Lenovo Y570 that came like this.

Since the i7-4710 benchmarks as faster for both multi core and single core performance it should naturally be better. But the question nobody seems to be able to answer is how much better. Does anyone know any benchmarks that are specific to Alibre/Geomagic? It sure would be nice if there was standardized benchmark for this program like a model people could download and perform tests like time to rebuild it could be recorded along with their system specs **hint hint 3D Systems**. It could probably be a batch file that starts the program, opens a CAD file, rebuilds the model, records the load times and system specs, and then prints out the results to a text file. The other more complicated thing when comparing CPUs is single thread vs milti-thread/core performance. I can't seem to find out anything conclusive if this program benefits more from single thread performance or more cores.

I'm running Alibre 2012 [PRODUCTVERSION 14,0,3,14053] with a Phenom II x2 560, SSD, 8GB ram, but with integrated graphics (NF980 G65 mobo); the performance is ok except for rebuilding complex parts. I have been holding off getting a graphics card because my laptop (lenovo Y570) which has a dedicated gaming card (NVIDIA Geforce GT 555M) while not the best should be a lot better than my integrated graphics does not seem to work any better. My assumption is that rebuilding parts is CPU intensive rather than GPU and that a GPU pays off with things like rotating complex models that are already built. Is there any truth to this? Lately I have been spending a lot of time waiting on Alibre and since everyone says get a decent graphics card I decided to buy a Radeon R9 270X. I would have tried it out already but to my disappointment my power supply does not have the right plugs so I'm waiting for the adapters to get shipped. I'm hopeful to see a drastic improvement yet skeptical...

With large models Alibre crashes all the time especially when updating complex loft features. I am further frustrated the last save point is not saved after a crash unless the file is closed and then re-opened. I tried a demo of the latest Geomagic build hoping it would be better but to my disappointment it crashed just as much, and worse it had some display issues. Maybe it would be better with my new graphics card... I asked the sales rep some specific hardware questions and their response was "Most important is the graphics card and second most important is a nice SSD (decreases loading times for larger assemblies). Any modern CPU will handle Geomagic Design just fine as long as it's not made for mobile (tablets)". Not very helpful.. If anyone has any idea on my questions below please chime in.

- Does Alibre/Geomagic benefit more from single thread performance or cores. Specifically ss an 8 core CPU going to have any advantage over a 4 core given the same performance per core (of course assuming no other programs are running simultaneously using up cores).
- I am trying to decide between a intel 4690k/4790k vs AMD FX 8350/9590. I think one of the main differences between the i5 and i7 is hyperthreading. And the big difference between intel and AMD chips at the same price point is single thread performance. Does hyperthreading have an effect on Alibre/Geomagic either way?
- I know with Alibre a gaming video card is recommended vs workstation card because they are optimized for Direct X vs Open GL (unlike many other CAD programs). Is Geomagic the same in this regard?
 
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adamflyer

New Member
Well I got the 270X graphics card and as I expected it does not make a noticeable difference when rebuilding 3-D models. I'm guessing it would help out with display type operations but with the models I have been working with I have not had an issue using my integrated graphics and I am working with a fairly complicated model. I'm not very convinced why such a high priority is placed on graphics cards when the only bottleneck I think I am hitting is overwhelmingly my CPU. My wait times are when I make an update to something early on in the design tree and everything has to be rebuilt. So that was sort of a waste of money for Alibre:( Since I can't get a confirmation from anyone if Alibre can make use of 8 cores on a AMD chip I think I'm going to order a 4790k since it supposedly has much better single thread performance.

On the bright side running SprutCAM9 has a very noticeable difference when running simulations.
 
T

TylerDurden

Alibre Super User
I don't usually work with big models, but if you have one to share, I can test stuff (load times, update times, etc.) and compare my results with yours.

I got a new machine this spring. specs are below.
 
A

adamflyer

New Member
Hi Tyler, I posted a CAD file here https://grabcad.com/library/4g63-cylinder-head-1. Its not the one I was working on but I figure it would suite for a sort of benchmark. Post the time it took to "Regenerate All" on grabcad.

The file I'm working on takes something like 4 minutes anytime I have to rebuild from the top and crashes the program all the time. I finally broke down and got a 4790k and new mobo. I hope to try it out as soon as I get my Alibre license transferred over. I'll post my results over at grabcad for those that are interested.
 
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