Choosing a Laptop for Statistics/Data Science

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Oct 19, 2018
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I am a new graduate student in statistics, and I am looking to buy a laptop that will allow me to handle moderate statistical workloads. At this point, I have narrowed my choice down to two laptops: a Dell XPS 15 or a Dell Precision 7530. I have two main questions about these machines.

First, while the configurations are comparable in specs, the Precision has a larger chassis and better cooling, and I have heard the XPS 15 has problems with thermal throttling. Should I expect noticeable performance improvements from the same hardware in the Precision (especially when under heavy/long workloads) over the XPS 15? Or would the thermal throttling in the XPS 15 not be that significant?

Second, the XPS 15 has a 1050ti maxQ while the Precision has a quadro p2000 (I could also potentially get the p3200 if it would make a big difference). I know the quadro cards are designed for CAD-type work, and they have some features (i.e. double precision) that won't be very useful to me. However, I haven't been able to find a straight answer to the question of whether having a quadro or a geforce would make much of a difference in statistical (and machine learning) computations. Most of the advice I found said go for the geforce because it's cheaper, but in this case the two laptops are very close in price. Since most people seem to use geforce cards for statistics/data science, I am mostly wondering whether getting the quadro would be a definitively worse choice for these tasks?

Thank you for your advice!
 
Go for the most capable laptop: plan for growth and select Quadro.

What applications will you be using? Check the recommended hardware specs. Probably some listing grouped by minimum, recommended, and best.

Select the laptop (and associated configuration) that meets as many of the recommended and best hardware requirements.

Also check with your professors and advisiors. Find out what laptops they are using and the corresponding hardware/software configurations.

Hopefully some of them are doing real world work on the side and will be able to tell you what would be a good choice. For now and for later on.
 
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