Asus G750JZ Gaming Laptop used for 3dsMax modeling for about $3,500 flexible?

[Munir]

When not at my desk workstation, would the following laptop do?:

Intel® Haswell CoreTM i7-4700HQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache)

32GB DDR3 1600MHz (Dual Channel Memory (4x8GB SODIMMS)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX880M 4GB GDDR5 VRAM

17.3" FHD 16:9 (1920x1080) display

512 SSD

[RyderSK]

Yes of course, it's almost overkill with the GPU for a laptop. If you can survive the odd look (still better than Alienware,but...).

 

I have gaming ultrabook from MSI with 4700HQ, and the performance at 2,4GHz equals to old SandyBridge desktop i7 2600k at 3,4GHz, so...pretty damn good for laptop ?

The display obviously is pretty bad, it's TN, with bad angles and poor contrast but, if you won't do color correction on it extensively it is fine.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Pretty much what Juraj said...

Yes, this laptop is pretty good

It is within reach of a 2600K indeed which is darn fast for any laptop, but that's because it boosts to 3.4GHz + is 2x generations younger. The 2600K only boosts to 3.8GHz over its 3.4 base. For single threaded those should be hard to tell apart, with the 2600K getting a slight advantage in rendering - unimportant if you consider that the 4700 is almost half the watts.

 

- almost overkill tho...if you can cut back a CPU model (100-200MHz) won't see much of a difference. You could also perhaps manage with a smaller SSD? $3500 is lots of money for something that will worth 1/3 (if that) in a couple of years and you won't be using as your primary machine.

[Munir]

OK, the Asus is actually around $2,800, but I'm trying to keep my budget around $3,500. Since Juraj mentioned MSI, I decided to take a look at the MSI GT70. Wow, an i7-4900MQ at 3.8 GHz, with a GTX 880M that has 8 GB of GDDR5, with 32GB of DDR3L at 1600 ram for $2,800. I think I've just changed my mind. I'd like a big GPU for Vray-RT work.

[RyderSK]

with a GTX 880M that has 8 GB of GDDR5

 

I had to look around a bit..but it indeed has 8GB of ram. Rather small Bus but...full fledged 8Gb, not 2x4GB. Atleast if I am not looking at bullshit resources..

[Dimitris Tolios]

I had to look around a bit..but it indeed has 8GB of ram. Rather small Bus but...full fledged 8Gb, not 2x4GB. Atleast if I am not looking at bullshit resources..

 

What's "fully fledged" vs. 2x4GB ?

 

You mean DDR5 "clamshell" mode (which probably is for 8GB, uses 8*1GB/8gbit chips)?

This doesn't have a performance penalty according to DDR5 specs.

 

Or are you referring to the "scam" nVidia and AMD use to advertise dual-GPU desktop cards summing the total VRam onboard, conveniently forgetting that each GPU has its own buffer and current tech doesn't allow direct resource sharing?

[RyderSK]

Yeah the latter, is this the same ? Does look like 8GB single card. If so, is a desktop 8xx something coming up with GTX 8xx GB ram ?

[Dimitris Tolios]

No, this is actually the 1st production 8GB "GTX" GPU, and yes it was for laptops =)

All get on one Kepler die, pretty carefully binned for low consumption: this card is practically a "Downclocked" 680/770, with the performance of a GTX 670 (slightly beats a 760 desktop card), but the amazing part is that it does it at 60% or so the TDP of the desktop GK104 cards (still more Watts than what a rMBP and most non-gaming-laptops pull altogether with screens, storage etc at full load!).

 

I will have to say that the 8GB of VRam will most likely be "useless" a far as gaming/viewport performance goes: it is proven in practice that the 256bit GK104 cards run out of raw processing grunt before even the 2GB of fast GDDR5 and PCIe 3.0 really get saturated. Other than with modified games with 4K textures and ofcourse some really demanding GPGPU rendering scene etc, for most real life applications this card would see little to no benefit having 4GB, further more 8GB VRam, it is just a numbers game for those that what to have the most impressive specs and are willing to pay for them.

 

Note, that VRam utilization reported by utilities like GPU-Z, are not telling the whole truth: it is proven that running the same workload on 2x otherwise identical cards, say a 2GB GTX 760 and a 4GB variant of a GTX760, you will see more ram allocated for the task in the 4GB card, without any whatsoever performance benefit.

 

That's the card playing it safe. It doesn't mean that if you see GPU-Z reporting 90+% memory utilization in your 2GB card = you are oversaturating it and the viewport approaches its performance limits.

If you start seeing choppy performance, stuttering etc with the VRam being stuck "up there", or even worse the driver crashes on you, then it might be the case, but in our pre-4K era, and on 1080p laptops, 2-3GB of VRam are more than fine.