Power Laptops
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I agree with Cadken... serious machines with serious prices...
wish I had a laptop... I'm too poor though.
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I've been running SU and a number of rendering softwares of my Dell Precision M70 for the last 3 years. The M90 would be a step up - no doubt. At the time it cost my office around $3000 which they more than made up in the extra man hours I get in at home.
-single intel core
-2gb RAM
-Nvidia card with 256 onboard ram
-80gb harddrive......although this spec is a few years old you know that what you want is at leas more than what im showing above.
The Precision M70 is designed with AutoCad users so it handles the workload well. It has been stable and I travel with it back and forward to work everyday over terrible washington DC streets on my scooter. I was worried about this mode of transport given how fragile electronics can be but this machine keeps ticking so it's not so bad after all.
Ypnos
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@ypnos1 said:
I've been running SU and a number of rendering softwares of my Dell Precision M70 for the last 3 years.
Ypnos
Your reply is interresting because there are some refurb warrantied M70's floating arround for a couple of hundred quid. (May be an option without having to destroy the drinking budget!) What processor size are you running and are you happy with the display quality?
I have spent some time researching current models based on graphics performance and have boiled down the list to the items above. For anybody wanting to buy a new laptop this may save you some time. These are not necessarilly the most expensive machines but 3D performance wise they all feature in many current top 5 reviews. Those Alienware machines with 2 Nvidia 250MB chips are something special if money is not a problem. The HP is a top performer even beating the M90 in some tests with less memory and the 'smaller' Quadro FX1500 GPU - and therefor a slightly 'cheaper' machine.
Still hoping to hear from anybody using one of these.
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Alas, you used to be able to buy laptops with desktop processors. Alienware mj12-7700, voodooPC and another company from Canada that I forget. They were based on a Chinese OEM (I forget now). HP also had one of its own design. I have an Alienware laptop (about 2 yrs old) with 3.8 Ghz single processor and nVidia quadro video card. It is very fast, very heavy, and runs hot.
Since SU is limited by processor speed for complex geometry the faster the processor the better. But nobody* makes laptops with such processors anymore -- they all seem to use dual core in the range of 2 to 2.6 Ghz. Not being multi-threaded SU cannot benefit from multi-processors (nor can any 3D modeling application I know of).
*Only one I could find with search was a VoodooPC with Intel Extreme X6800 Quad Core Censored to protect your privacy 3Ghz. Way, way too much money though....
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Paul, SU may not use multi-threading but some rendering software does, including VRay for SU, or at least I've been told so and there is an option in VRay for thread prioritizing. I have noticed some performance changes if I disable/enable multithreading in the BIOS for my PC.
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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Lewis,
Indeed many rendering apps can multi-thread, but my understanding is that no 3D modeling application does --so the bottleneck for creating comlex geometry is the processor speed. Since SU is always inferencing while you work (a great asset), it's bound to bog down with very high poly count. My point really was that the advent of multi-core processors is no help since they are slower in this case than the older ones that would go up to 3.8 Ghz, and all the laptop manufacturers have gone with dual-core.... What ever happened to Moore's Law?Paul
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Moved to Hardware Forum
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as far as I know it's not using any second proecessor...
maybe next update? I have a Core 2 Duo E4300
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I'm very happy with my setup. Not the greatest but definitely a great value. I think I paid $1200 retail 2 years ago. It was one of those note book "desktop replacement" models.
HP Pavillion zv 6000
Athlon 64 3500+(desktop model) 2.2 Ghz
ATI 200M 128Mb dedicated memory + 128 shared w/ ram
2 gigs of ram
100 gig drive
PCI-Express card slot, You can now add an external desktop video card.
PC card slot
4 usb
8 in 1 media card reader
?!firewire?!
15.4" wide screen
Cons:
Battery life 1-2 hours
(that processor runs hottt)
weighs a ton, 13 pounds i think.
Dual channel memory is irreversibly disabled.I've had it two years w/ 0 problems.
You probably could pick up one of these for less than $500 bucks, add a whiz bang 4 Ghz processor
and an external video card 4 rendering.
And still have beer money leftover
Cheers.[LMNO]
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@pmiller said:
Lewis,
Indeed many rendering apps can multi-thread, but my understanding is that no 3D modeling application does ...I'm sure I saw a vid the other day demonstrating the capabilities of 3DSMax 9, which seemed to be using multiple processors as well as being 64 bit capable.
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