I’m looking into buying a new laptop mainly with the aim of presenting and working on models with customers and doing some basic on-site modelling. I don’t need anything really high spec as my main modelling is done on a desktop but I definitely need to be able to display models with some level of anti-aliasing. So my question is, can Sketchup 2018 perform anti-alias using onboard graphics (along the lines of Intel HD 620, which supports OpenGL) or do I have to have a dedicated GPU (MX series maybe)?
A dedicated (discrete) Nvidia Ge-Force 9 family (or higher) GTX series GPU is always preferred.
The higher the series, the better. The GTX 1000 series is in current production.
Beware of new old stock or refurbished notebooks having old GPUs that do not support OpenGL 3+.
Note that the MX series are obsolete Ge-Force 4 entry level GPUs that do not support SketchUp 2017 and higher’s required OpenGL 3 minimum.
You likely meant the suffix code “MX” which is a mobile package number, not a GPU series. Dont worry about the suffix, concentrate on the series number the immediately follows the “GTX”.
Thanks for the reply Dan. I figured I probably needed a dedicated GPU but was hoping to get away with getting a less expensive and smaller laptop (13’) most of which don’t have one (I know some of the ultrabooks do but they are pretty expensive for my needs).
Do you know if the new Intel CPUs with On Package AMD RX Vega (i7-8809G, i5-8305G) will be supported? I might wait for the current lines of laptops to be updated with those, if they are.
SketchUp does not “support” any specific CPUs or GPUs.
SketchUp is a single threaded application so uses only one core of any CPU (ie, number of cores do not really matter for SketchUp modeling.) But the faster the CPU the better for SketchUp.
Graphics rendering within SketchUp uses the OpenGL 3 libraries which need to be supported by the GPU and it’s device driver used for SketchUp. (Without direct knowledge a buyer is at the mercy of what the GPU manufacturer claims their OpenGL compliance is.)
Generally Intel integrated GPUs have always had issues running SketchUp. There have been recent reports of late model Intel HD 6xx graphics having issues especially under Windows 10. (Search the forum, especially the Technical Problems subcategory.)
7th Gen Intel HD processors like the HD 620 support up to OpenGL 4.5, which is why I wondered if SketchUp will perform anti-aliasing in the viewport using just one of these, as opposed to a dedicated GPU. I’ve read the recommended specs and understand that a dedicated GPU is preferable, which I have on my desktop but for my use case (customer demonstration and light modelling), I wanted to know if the anti-aliasing option would exist, when just using a CPU. If there are issues, I will probably have to spend a bit more on a laptop.