Do I need dgpu or igpu will be enough
Hey everyone,
I'm a 2nd-year B.E. AIML student looking for a laptop to last 4-5 years, funded by my parents. My main focus is studies and skill-building, with casual weekend gaming like Minecraft now and hopefully RDR2 down the line(rdr2 and AAA games can wait till i earn)
I'm torn between two paths. The first is getting a high-end processor with an iGPU and great battery life, relying entirely on free cloud services like Kaggle or Colab for ML training.
The second is getting a mid-tier processor with a dedicated Nvidia GPU(3050), sacrificing battery life but allowing local workflows and gaming. Battery life isn't a major factor for me since I'll usually be near a charging port.
Since I don't know the practical details of how models are built and trained yet, I want to ask: Do AIML undergrads actually need a local dGPU, or are free cloud platforms enough? If I go the dGPU route, can a budget card give me stable performance for 5 years?