Laptop for 3ds Max 2012

[Gorion]

Hi all!!!!

 

I want to buy a laptop to work in 3ds Max 2012 (I know a Desktop always is better and I have a good one). I want it mostly for drawing 'cause for rendering I can use my desktop. The question is that in a range of prices below 2.500$ (preferably below 2.000$) I found these laptops:

 

 

I appreciate any constructive comment or suggestion for other laptops.

 

Thanks!!!!!

[stansotirov]

MSI is not good option in my opinion. Got one before not so productive, and a lot problems most with dispay. I think Acer is the best one from those, because Alienware is not optimal configuration and if you make it better it will go over $2,500 i'm sure...

[Dimitris Tolios]

Ofc the cheaper a laptop is, the highest its value. The Acer you've listed appears to be hard to beat in this field as it will do "ok" in most scenarios.

What kind of modelling will you ask your laptop to perform?

 

Also, how important is mobility (weight/physical size) for you? Laptops with top-of-the-line GTX/Radeon cards are large (even if not heavy) as those parts generate loads of heat and need sizable heatsinks and fans to cool them down, and large cases to isolate them sufficiently from your hands and/or lap. Ofc expect none of those laptops to be very comfortable holding on your lap when under load. You will sweat and suffer!

 

Battery life is a joke with most laptops featuring an above average dedicated GPU anyways, but the powerful gaming laptops are adding the shear size + a huge power brick (power adapter) to match the power requirements of those cards, that might be 2 or 3 times that of even the fastest mobile CPU. Thus you will never find a really fast GPU inside a MBP that tries to stay slick and elegant.

 

So, at the end of the day, if you won't be doing SUPER complicated stuff, in which case all the gaming cards in these laptops would be challenged to perform well, the Acer is clearly the value winner. Given you can live with the mediocre 1600x900 screen Acer insist using (I have the 7745G and it was my biggest complain for an otherwise AMAZING laptop for its time and cost @ $800+tax 3y ago/ Got me through Arch Grad school just fine, and had vastly inferior hardware in it in comparison to the beastly + much more power efficient Ivy Bridge i7s).

Edited May 5, 2013 by dtolios