Laptop for CUDA programming.

[ace5968]

Ok, so first of all, I AM NEW TO THE LAPTOP WORLD. And I'm looking a laptop for CUDA programming under $1000. Anyone got a suggestion and recommendation?

 

[Charles A Peirce]

The cheapest option is to buy a suitable nVidia card and install into a desktop PC. However, if you want to go on the laptop rout, you will have to pay more for the same level of performance.

Most Laptops come with Windows, so I am going to assume that you intend to use the Windows operating system.

To use CUDA on your system, you will need the following installed:

A CUDA-capable GPU (Tesla, Quadro, NVS, GeForce, or Tegra/Jetson)
A supported version of Microsoft Windows (Server 2008 R2 or 2012 R2, or Windows 7 or 8.1, all must be 64 bit)
A supported version of Microsoft Visual Studio ( 2010, 2012, 2013 or Community 2013, all must be 64 bit)
the NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit (available at http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads)

The Lenovo Laptop Z70 has an Intel Core i5 5200U (2.20GHz), 16GB Memory, 1TB HDD, and an NVIDIA GeForce 840M which is rated by NVidia at CUDA 5.0, almost the highest you can get. Thats available at around $790 (depending on where you are and where you shop) plus taxes (depending...).

An alternative is the ASUS X550JK-DH71 Gaming Laptop, which has an Intel Core i7 4710HQ (2.50GHz) 8GB Memory 1TB HDD, and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 850M 2GB GDDR3. This goes for around $850.

There are probably a few more that fit into your price limit, but do be careful - not all NVidia equipped laptops are capable of CUDA programming. Do check with NVidia's web site that the GPU is one that has CUDA enabled.

NB. If you are keen on Linux development, then you shouldn't have too much trouble replacing the operating system with Linux. That would be scarily fast...