Dell Mobile Work stations

I am looking to upgrade my Dell M-60 mobile workstation to a new Dell mobile
workstation.
My options are M90 and M4300.
PTC rates the M90 as only supported for Wildfire 4.0 and the M-4300 as
certified.
The problem is with the graphics cards.
Dell offers only an NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M for the M-4300 and
a choice of NVIDIA Quadro FX 3500M 512MB, 2500M 512MB or 1500M 256MB for
the M90.
The M4300 has a slightly better processor.

Nvidea lists the Quadro FX 360M as an entry level card.
All the cards offered for the M90 are listed as "high end" cards.

The mantra of PTC has always been to buy the best graphics card you could
afford for ProE.

Has anyone had any experience with either of these machines or seen a
benchmark test for them?
At this point, it looks like the M90 is the best option but it is an older
model and, again, not certified for Wildfire 4.0.

Thanks for your help,

Doug

 

Wildfire 4.0 is still in preproduction. There is no such thing as a
"certified" computer for it as far as I'm concerned until it's
released. Also, Dell nor any other vendor doesn't send every computer
model in for certification or else they'd be paying PTC a whole lot of
money for certifications that wouldn't help their sales much. IME, if
the graphics card is recent and the computer or one almost identical
to it is certified to the current release or the one behind it, that's
about as good of a guarantee as can exist.

I wouldn't worry mucha bout the video card on-board ram. That is for
texturing, which most Pro/E users never use. You want the best
graphics processor really, and plenty of system ram. The slight
downgrade in system processor on the M90s is a nonissue, if the
difference is even measurable.

I think you want an M90. The M4300 seems to be an in-between - maybe
good for graphics work or 2D CAD, but not really 3D CAD. Lots of
sizzle but less steak. So I'm not sure the newer model is actually
better. I am curious about the solid-state hard drive option in the
M4300 though. Disk performance in general drives me nuts on a laptop,
so anything faster is welcome.

Dave

 

Thank you both for your input. It never seems to be an easy decision to get
the biggest bang for your buck.
Doug