How reliant is it on OpenGL? If it needs decent OpenGL power / support, then you need to look at workstation class laptops, which puts you in a totally different class of laptop. (Mobile FireGL or Mobile Quadro)

I'd always go for a ThinkPad, if the bugdet is there. They are boring, but well built, reliable and decent performance.

How reliant is it on OpenGL?

if it's anything like Catia, you're going to need a beast

I think given the software reqs, the budget is a little low.

But does it HAVE to be a laptop?

Intel Core i3 2310M


The Intel Core i3-2310M is a dual core processor for laptops. It is based on the Sandy Bridge architecture and offers Hyperthreading to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline). Compared to the faster Core i5, the i3 does not offer the Turbo Boost technique for the CPU part and is therefore clocked at 2.1 GHz (max).

Sandy Bridge is the evolutionary successor of the Arrandale architecture. The most noteable improvements are the new 265Bit AVX instructions, the improved Turbo 2.0 and the integration of the graphics card into the 32nm CPU core.

Der i3-2310M offers an integrated graphics card ( Intel HD Graphics 3000) which is clearly faster then the older Intel HD Graphics in the Arrandale CPUs. As the new GPU is included in the CPU, it is also manufactured in 32nm and shares the fast level 3 cache with the CPU cores (using a new ring bus). In the 2310M it is clocked from 650-1100MHz (with Turbo Boost). The faster Sandy Bridge CPUs are clocked up to 1300 MHz (like the i5-2520M).

Furthermore, an improved dual-channel DDR3 memory controller is included on the CPU die that is used by the CPU and GPU part.

Due to the improved architecture, the average performance of the Core i3-2310M is higher than a similar clocked Arrandale Core i3 without Turbo Boost. In synthetic benchmarks, the performance was about on par with the faster clocked Core i5-430M (2.3-2.5 GHz) and therefore adequate for most applications.