Looking for a PC in the $500-800 range. Laptop would be great, but not necessary. If PC, should be relatively small form factor, but wouldn't need to be NUC-size small. Something ~2L volume should be considered the max I would say, but smaller would be welcome. I use to do my own builds 20+ years ago, but this isn't for me and I don't really have the time anymore, so pre-built preferred (stuff like adding RAM wouldn't be a problem though).
The most intensive thing that will be done on this PC is going projects with and running Google Earth (as a desktop application on Windows).
We're upgrading from a laptop that has an i7-8550U with integrated graphics, 16GB RAM and Toshiba XG5 512GB NVMe SSD. Right now, Google Earth is a bit slow and laggy (at times), importing layered images from the local drive. I can see in the Resource Monitor that the CPU and GPU are both high utilization (sometimes the CPU pegs). I've tweaked some of the settings, but haven't been able to improve the performance much.
Not married to either Intel or AMD, whatever is going to deliver the best performance per price.
Buying in the US.
Have all the peripherals needed, just looking for the PC itself.
Would like to get something in the next 3 months probably, but could potentially hang on longer if something will be coming out imminently after the 3 months period expires.
My thoughts are currently set towards something like the HP Elitedesk, or the NUC or similar (like ASUS PN series). My main problem is, I can't seem to find any benchmarks or even guidelines on how to pick hardware optimally for Google Earth. It seems GPU intensive, but I'm not 100% sure at what point that becomes the bottle-neck or if nVidia or AMD seem better at handling it. Or if doesn't even matter with a current gen device, because we're so far beyond the integrated graphics that were in the Intel 8th gen products. So I'm looking for your advice/input. Thanks!
The most intensive thing that will be done on this PC is going projects with and running Google Earth (as a desktop application on Windows).
We're upgrading from a laptop that has an i7-8550U with integrated graphics, 16GB RAM and Toshiba XG5 512GB NVMe SSD. Right now, Google Earth is a bit slow and laggy (at times), importing layered images from the local drive. I can see in the Resource Monitor that the CPU and GPU are both high utilization (sometimes the CPU pegs). I've tweaked some of the settings, but haven't been able to improve the performance much.
Not married to either Intel or AMD, whatever is going to deliver the best performance per price.
Buying in the US.
Have all the peripherals needed, just looking for the PC itself.
Would like to get something in the next 3 months probably, but could potentially hang on longer if something will be coming out imminently after the 3 months period expires.
My thoughts are currently set towards something like the HP Elitedesk, or the NUC or similar (like ASUS PN series). My main problem is, I can't seem to find any benchmarks or even guidelines on how to pick hardware optimally for Google Earth. It seems GPU intensive, but I'm not 100% sure at what point that becomes the bottle-neck or if nVidia or AMD seem better at handling it. Or if doesn't even matter with a current gen device, because we're so far beyond the integrated graphics that were in the Intel 8th gen products. So I'm looking for your advice/input. Thanks!
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