What is a good CUDA laptop?

Question

If I'm looking to play around with some python code that needs a GPU and will not run on a CPU only machine, what's a good laptop I can buy? I keep running into CUDA not installed errors and I can't install CUDA.

roosgit · Accepted Answer

CUDA is specific to Nvidia GPUs. So you'll need a computer (laptop, in your case) with an Nvidia video card which supports CUDA.
Does the Python code you want to run use PyTorch? Is it related to LLMs or Stable Diffusion? Because those should also run on CPU alone. Not very fast, but good enough to play around with.
If you're thinking of renting a machine from AWS, I'm currently using a "g4dn.xlarge" instance which does support CUDA and can run Stable Diffusion comfortably. It's a bit pricey though and I had to wait and get approved before I could rent it.

nikonyrh · Answer

One option is to go for Dell's Alienware line, depending on your needs you need to choose how much RAM you need on the GPU card. RTX 4000 generation seems to have at minimum 8 GB, which is sufficient for most problems for now.

smoldesu · Answer

Why do you want a laptop? You'll be paying for worse performance and less capable cooling. If you already have a primary laptop you use, it would be cheaper and higher-performance to build a CUDA-oriented homeserver and SSH into that.

andrewfromx · Answer

someone told me https://system76.com/laptops/oryx but looking at ASUS Zephyrus G14

asineth0 · Answer

Probably an ASUS Zephyrus G14