Which upgrade for 15-inch MacBook Pro RD?

[hojx]

I am taking up a course in Industrial Design, so I will be getting a new laptop for school. I am set on a 15-inch MBP w/ RD, but I am stuck on which spec upgrade(s) to get. Keep in mind I am just a student so I can't max everything out, but I still want something rather future-proof for the entire four years of my course at least.

My course is going to involve things like 2D & 3D rendering with Adobe, AutoCAD suite of applications, amongst others. In my case, would a CPU or RAM upgrade be more worthwhile?

 

[kelon111]

I am taking up a course in Industrial Design, so I will be getting a new laptop for school. I am set on a 15-inch MBP w/ RD, but I am stuck on which spec upgrade(s) to get. Keep in mind I am just a student so I can't max everything out, but I still want something rather future-proof for the entire four years of my course at least.

My course is going to involve things like 2D & 3D rendering with Adobe, AutoCAD suite of applications, amongst others. In my case, would a CPU or RAM upgrade be more worthwhile?

The 15-inch MBP w/ RD is not optimized for CAD. Keep in mind that the GT 750M is much slower than a GTX 680M. You should be looking at mobile workstations instead.

The Dell Precision M3800 is a good start. The K1100M is like a K2000M in performance (check notebookcheck for more info).

Sample CAD benchmarks: