Recommended Specs for Autocad

[bchendri]

Hello everyone! I'm starting college soon and doing their Mechanical Engineering program. All I know is that I need a laptop for it when I start, and that we'll be using Autocad. I saw on other posts that people wanted to know, but I haven't seen anywhere whether or not we'll be using 2D or 3D (it may be obvious either way since it's Mechanical Engineering, but I know nothing). I need this to last at least 4 years, so my strategy was to go a little above the recommended specs to hopefully have it function well with Autocad 2028 or whatever I'll be using my senior year. I thought I saw somewhere that Autocad is GPU heavy, so that's what I mainly am focusing on when looking, I figure the CPU will be good enough in the laptop if the GPU is. I was thinking an RTX 4070 8gb or AMD equivalent? Is that enough, for now and four years into the future? Feedback is much appreciated, thank you.

[paullimapa]

This link should tell you the graphics cards Autodesk software has been tested with

This link are the minimum hardware requirements 

[bchendri]

Thank you! Do you have any recommendations for a GPU that will run well for the next 4 years of software? I'm hesitant to buy just the recommended GPU because I noticed that the recommended becomes more and more powerful over the years. The 2020 software recommended a 4gb GPU, and this years is recommending an 8gb GPU. I'm concerned that a similar jump will happen by the time the 2028 software rolls around, and my GPU that once worked well will be less than ideal.

[paullimapa]

Assuming there’s another 4gb jump:

1) is there a 12gb available 

2) can you afford it

[pendean · Accepted solution]

Read this about future-proofing your purchase, then make an informed decision, no one here knows your budget and I'd be very surprised if you'll always be limited to using old CAD software like AutoCADMECHANICAL for long when there are more advanced programs that employers are hiring for out there:

https://blog.cadalyst.com/cadmanagement/is-it-time-for-a-new-workstation-specs-for-2024-and-beyond

HTH