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I am surprised no one asked this before. I am getting a new laptop and I will be mainly using Mathematica more than anything else on it.

When selecting a laptop, should I put more emphasis on CPU or GPU? How much emphasis should I put on the other choice as well?

Could someone tell me which type of operations on Mathematica use which component of the two?

Thank you very much in advance!

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  • $\begingroup$ @andre I meant a laptop model, sorry. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2018 at 11:29
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    $\begingroup$ it really depends on what you intend to do with it; check this and probably this; this is not a definitive answer but in my limited experience your no1 priority should be ram volume $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2018 at 13:20
  • $\begingroup$ @user42582 thank you very very much! $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2018 at 13:46
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    $\begingroup$ As a rule of thumb: ram is always good to have. A good GPU is mainly helpful for the front end (rendering of complex graphics, for example) and for certain specific computational tasks (e.g., machine learning is getting more and more support for GPU computation). Everything else that's done in the kernel will mostly benefit from CPU and ram. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2018 at 14:11
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    $\begingroup$ Apart from some applications in machine learning and image processing (and maybe some other rare examples), Mathematica does mostly rely on the CPU. I would also say that the FrontEnd does not profit too much from a GPU (although it is always better to have one) because all the graphics related things are actually computed on CPU and then sent to GPU. So, a fast GPU might speed up rotating a 3D graphics a little while its creation time is dominated by the CPU's speed -- and by some shortcomings of the FrontEnd actually. So I would advise to invest primarily in CPU and RAM. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 15, 2018 at 15:39

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