New Laptop for SketchUp Pro

SketchUp Computer Advice
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After some searching I couldn’t find a recent entries on this topic- apologies if this has been covered recently.

My old laptop died recently, and so I’ll need a replacement. SketchUp Pro is probably the most demanding thing that I do on it, other than have way too many windows/tabs/apps open at the same time.

Unless otherwise advised, I’m planning on a fairly large screen, 12th generation intel processor (probably i7, maybe i5) and 32GB RAM.

I would really appreciate any thoughts- I’ve read the requirements, but I’m not finding them too enlightening.

In particular, I use a second monitor whenever I’m at my desk doing most of my serious modeling work, so are there any particular mobile graphics chipsets that are particularly happy for SketchUp?

Thanks in advance VERY much for any thoughts!

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Nvidia is the preferred GPU for SketchUp.

The speed of the processor is a key factor for performance, speed is king.

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I may be wrong about this, but wanted to argue about the Nvidia part.

SketchUp works a lot better with a discreet GPU. That can be M1, AMD, or Nvidia. Whichever one you have, it will be better (on PC) than the Intel integrated GPU.

It doesn’t affect you, but for your interest, integrated GPUs work better on Mac. M1 arguably uses an integrated GPU, and works really well.

I think that for most purposes, AMD or Nvidia, will work equally well with SketchUp.

But, Adobe and others do have better abilities with Nvidia. Which I think backs up RLGL’s suggestion.

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There have been more issues on the forum involving AMD than Nvidia.

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But in the future, if needed, NVidia supports V-ray in hardware.
I don’t think you should take any GPU other than RTX now

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I’m new with SketchUp (3-4 months), so take my experience with a grain of salt. I recently got a new desktop computer with a Nvidia GeFroce RTX 3090 Ti GDDR6X (running on i9-12900K processor). It works great. Previously (and still) I use a laptop with i7 processor and the graphics has both Intel and Nvidia. I think it’s through a windows graphics setting that I set it to use the Nvidia graphics. I set to use the nvidia all the time, but there were settings that let me pick by application which graphics I chose to use. When setting up the new desktop, I saw that was still possible although the new machine is dedicated Nvidia so no choosing. The laptop config works fine too with Sketchup, although it would get pretty warm to touch if used most of the day. I don’t really know much about computers, but did a bunch of research on what works best for doing Sketchup. Also, I have a 27" monitor and it’s very nice – gives a lot of room to move around on the SketchUp drawing window. A huge improvement over the 15" laptop screen and another 21" monitor.

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SketchUp is less fussed about the graphics card, I think if you buy a modern 12th generation processor, they are all pretty good at the time of operations that SketchUp performs.
If you know which processor options you are looking at, we can give you more information and what the realistic difference between the i7 and the i5 will be (probably not much)

Graphics chipsets will mostly be here nor there if you just plan on using SketchUp, however if you are driving a 2nd monitor, then I would look for a machine with an HDMI output - this will avoid needing to use docks/adapters that often do not work correctly with SketchUp.

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Yes, what you say seems right. Adobe and others support RTX better, they don’t support GTX as well.

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That’s why I wrote RTX

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Thanks very much to all for the discussion.

For anyone who may find it useful:

I made a choice based on the fact that I am a builder/remodeler.

I rely heavily on sketchup for proof of concept (it’s really easy to build in sketchup, get your mistakes out of the way, and then build IRL, rather than the other way around).

I also use it to validate design concepts with customer, but I don’t anticipate doing advanced renderings or visualizations or animations.

And then I also run the business with an office suite, and research products and techniques- web sites and videos.

I was working fine on a Dell Precision 7520, so I decided not to worry the graphics suggestions posted here- I thought RAM and processing were more important considerations, and getting into a dedicated RTX graphics processor just tipped the scales the wrong way.

So for those of you with access to a Costco membership, I got it for a little over $1,300 delivered to my door, AND it’s very easy to return if somebody talks me out of it :slight_smile:

Lenovo Slim 7i 16" Intel Evo Platform Touchscreen Laptop - 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H - Intel Arc A370M Graphics - 144HZ - Windows 11; 32 GB RAM

Thanks again!

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Hi,
I have pretty much the same laptop but I have constantly bugsplats, just by using sketchup for a few minutes. I have all the updates on it and am slowly running out of ideas.