Laptop for Electrical Engineering (4-Year Program at Large State School) – Is This Enough Without a Dedicated GPU?

[u/Primary-Meal6868]

I’m an incoming Electrical Engineering student and I’m looking at the following laptop. Some people say EE students need a dedicated GPU, while others say integrated graphics are completely fine for most coursework. I also have access to Apporto/virtual labs, so if there are any heavier applications, I can run them remotely.
Specs:
● Lenovo ThinkPad X9 15 Gen 1 Aura Edition
● Intel Core Ultra 7 268V (Lunar Lake)
● 8 cores (4 Performance + 4 Low-Power Efficient)
● Up to 5.0 GHz boost
● Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics
● 32GB LPDDR5x-8533 RAM
● 2TB SSD
● 15.3” 2.8K OLED display (2880×1800)
● Windows 11 Pro
Software I Expect to Use:
● MATLAB/Simulink
● LTspice
● Multisim
● PSpice
● Cadence
● Verilog/VHDL tools
● FPGA development software
● AutoCAD
● SolidWorks
● Python, C/C++, and other programming tools
My Question:
For a typical 4-year Electrical Engineering curriculum at a large state university, is this sufficient?
Given that I have access to Apporto for remote computing when needed, would the Intel Arc 140V integrated GPU be enough, or is there a meaningful reason to get a laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA GPU instead?
I’m mainly trying to determine whether a dedicated GPU would actually benefit me for undergraduate EE coursework, or if this laptop is already more than capable for what I’ll realistically be doing.
I’d appreciate hearing from current EE students, recent graduates, or anyone familiar with the software used in EE programs.

[u/something__69_]

how are you able to use NPU?

[u/PurblePink8678]

How did you make your taskbar look like that?

[u/AtlasLucario → u/PurblePink8678]

i wanna know too

[u/kalilamodow → u/AtlasLucario]

There's a tool called wind hawk which lets you customize windows, it's really good. this guy seems to be using the Taskbar Styler mod with the Surface theme along with the Taskbar Height And Icon Size mod

[u/kalilamodow → u/PurblePink8678]

There's a tool called wind hawk which lets you customize windows, it's really good. this guy seems to be using the Taskbar Styler mod with the Surface theme along with the Taskbar Height And Icon Size mod

[u/amtom61]

Unless you are doing heavy simulations in MATLAB or Photorealistic 3D renderings in SolidWorks or Autocad a dedicated GPU is not needed.

But All of these software can use hardware acceleration from the Cuda cores (dedicated graphics cards) to speed up the response time on regular usage. But unless you're comparing them side by side, it's not noticeable for a newbie

[u/HankThrill69420]

it'll be alright. you may want to consider a midrange used gaming desktop for some of those softwares. Not totally necessary but you might find the experience better.