I plan to purchase a Dell Insprion 17 3793 with an Intel Iris Plus graphic card. Will Sketchup accept that card? I see that is has the Open GL
It will probably work, but not give best performance. Windows Updates often break Intel graphics drivers.
Unless your budget is extremely tight, you would be better looking for a model, or even another brand, that has an nVidia graphics card. Even a budget one will have more reliable drivers and faster performance than any on board graphics chip.
Sketchup, like all 3D drawing programs can only use one processor thread. More cores don’t help SU performance, though they will speed up most rendering software and allow you better performance if you have other apps running besides SU.
So go for faster single core performance over more cores. Unless you are working with extremely large models, an i5 processor should give good SU performance. You might prefer an i7 of you have other demanding apps, or plan on building really huge SU models.
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As John says, it’ll probably work but not be the best. It doesn’t take much of a search here on the forum to see reports of problems due to broken Intel graphics drivers pushed in automatic Windows updates. There have been numerous cases where users have reported going along fine and then one day things have derailed because of one of these driver updates.
Historically (in computer terms) Nvidia GTX series graphics cards tend to be better performers as far as OpenGL support is concerned.
As I read the threads, I see docking stations can be a problem for SU. I wish to utilize two pc screens and a docking station appears the only solution, if I am to keep my laptop mobile (preferably). Is there a docking station out there that would avoid the unplugging and plugging of the docking or screen cables? I am returning my Dell Inspiron as soon as it arrives for the suggested architecture. Again thanks for the advice.
I did forget that I will use the rendering software vray.
I don’t know exactly which of the docking stations would show a problem, certainly the DisplayLink compatible ones I tested had issues. But, even the ones that failed would work if SketchUp was on a particular display. You ought to be able to keep SketchUp on the display that always works, and use the other display for other applications, including rendering programs.
Colin, forgive for my ignorance and maybe I am misunderstanding your thread, but I was speaking of keeping SU on one monitor while doing other jobs on the other. I guess what I have been reading is that people have to go through the unplugging their monitor to get the video to show on the screen. Are you familiar with that issue as a problem and do you think its related to the docking station? All have reported having the right video card (Nvidia).
At work we have HP mobile workstations and HP Thunderbolt docks, and almost endless trouble to have three simultaneously operational screens (laptop+ two external). After installing all firmware updates (both to computer and dock) and updating all the relevant drivers (display, Thunderbolt, network…) and switching from Displayport cables to Thunderbolt (USB-C) cables for the 4K screens it works more or less reliably.
The problems with docks can be manifold even without SketchUp and OpenGL. The problem with them was mainly with old DisplayLink docks that refused to run OpenGL.
I think I will go with a desktop and load SU and find a thunderbolt port (USB C) docking station for my other laptop software to with with the peripheries. From there I can just insert and pull the USB C cable to change btw the laptop and desktop. Your thoughts.