Hi, I am trying to decide between purchasing a MacBook Pro or a Dell Precision 5540. My main purpose for buying the laptop is to run CAD software such as Solidworks, AutoCAD etc (I still do not know precisely which CAD software I will primarily be using yet)
I understand that the general consensus in the CADing community is that a PC is better to run CAD software on. However, I have also heard that PCs tend to not last very long and that a Mac is way more stable. In addition, I can use bootcamp/parallels on my Mac which should overcome the problem of CADs needing a windows system. A Mac is a little more expensive than a Dell but if it has a longer lifetime and the overall experience is better, it might be worth the difference.
Below I have included the specs for each model. The only main difference is in the processor (Intel Xeon vs Intel I9) and graphics card (Radeon Pro 5500M vs Nvidia Quadro T2000).
Mac model I am interested in:
Model: 16‑inch MacBook Pro
Processor: 2.4GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
Memory: 32GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory
Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory
Storage: 1TB SSD storage
Price: ~2900 USD
Dell model I am interested in:
Model: 15 inch Dell Precision 5540 Mobile Workstation
Processor: Intel® Xeon E-2276M (6 Core Xeon, 12M Cache, 2.80GHz up to 4.70GHz Turbo, 45W, vPro)
Chassis Options: Intel Xeon E-2276M NVIDIA Quadro T2000 4GB
Memory: 32GB,2x16GB, 2666MHz DDR4 Non-Ecc Memory
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Quadro T2000 w/4GB GDDR6
Storage: M.2 512GB PCIe NVMe Class 40 Solid State Drive
Price: ~3400 USD
Does anyone have experience running Solidworks on a Mac using parallels/bootcamp? If so, would you recommend getting a Mac instead of a PC? If you do not, why? Is a Mac worth the price difference?
Hi Huening,
I have been using SW on a Macbook Pro with Parallels for the past six years and just recently switch over to a Dell Precision 7540. I loved my Macbook Pro for many things, but running SolidWorks and CREO was not one of them.
If you do choose to run SW on a Mac, you will be giving up a lot of things. First off, don't expect to get any tech support for hardware related issues from your VAR. Virtual OS's like Parallels are not officially supported, and for good reason, my colleagues and I here at Spanner have had many troubles with different versions of Parallels occasionally stop working, not loading .dll's for SW and other windows programs, etc. Its like we already have issues with MS Windows (although Win10 has been very stable) but when you run a virtual OS on top of another OS, you are doubling your chances for problems, but the biggest thing that you will be giving up is graphics and graphics performance along with many UI glitches and other graphic related functionality.
I could go on, but in short, you are in for a world of hurt if you choose to run SolidWorks on a Macbook and if you have a choice on which way to go, Mac or PC, and a good portion of your workday is going to be on SW, then I cannot think of why anyone would want to do it on a Mac.