suggestions 4 a workstation laptop

[marley6611]

looking to get a good workstation laptop that will run maya and Zbrush comfortably. I currently have a 1GB DDR2 dell xps and i hope to get something similar except with 2 gigs of ram.

I'm a little confused as to what exactly i have... stupid dells... i swear i'll never buy a dell again, i'm building my next computer!

in my device manager i have listed:

Dispaly adapters

-Radeon x800GT

-Radeon x800GT Secondary

Processors

-Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz

-Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.20GHz

 

does that mean i have two cards and 2 processors?

 

 

 

for the laptop I was looking at the alienware area 51 m7700:

Intel® Pentium® 4 640 Desktop Processor w/ HT Technology 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB 2MB

256MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 6800 Ultra

2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 1024MB

 

what do you guys think? suggestions on power, parts, and other options would be appreciated, budget is not too extravagant, but the laptop i'm looking at is $3,200 and thats affordable

[alfienoakes]

I would imagine, if you have a Dell with a pentium it is an HT.. thats why you are getting two processors showing up in your device manager.

 

And you probably won't have two graphics cards either. You get two appear if you have dual view enabled, or a second connection on the card.

 

Not a big laptop user, but processor speed and RAM.. they are your main allies.

 

Alien ware do some cracking pc's.. from what I have seen. I'm sure the guys will come up with some more suggestions..

 

Andy

[JamesTaylor]

i'd have a search thro the forums here for similar threads, there have been quite a few recently asking the same type of question.

 

from what i remember the guys seem to think you'll be able to get better value than the alienware, and i'm sure will give you links to appropoiate laptop sellers.

[tecton3d]

the alienware MJ-12® m7700i and MJ-12® m7700a are based from a Clevo notebook chassis ~ which you can get from powernotebooks.com, pctorque.com, sagernotebook.com. . . and maybe some others. Basically, if you go with something other than alienware you don't have to pay for thier marketing fluff. An X2 system, configured exactly the same, from A-ware and Sagernotebook.com come to a difference of around $300... the other vendors may provide even more savings.

 

that's including:

 

WUXGA 1920x1200 display

Athlon X2 4200

2 gb ram

80gb 7200 rpm hd

Quadro FX1400

 

. . . which is what I'd get if I were you (assuming you don't have a desktop workstation)!

 

Good luck

[Ernest Burden III]

This thread is from last week, similar questions:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16067

 

 

In the end I bought an off-the-shelf Toshiba so I wouldn't be waiting 3 weeks to get the thing. I had to drive to a CompUSA and wait 1/2 hour while they swapped in the new RAM chips to get 2GB. About $3000 with the RAM.

 

However, the Intel duocore chips are 32 bit I think. But not many of my day-to-day apps are 64bit, so it's working very well.

 

The only issue I have is that since this thing is a consumer machine, it has lots of crap on it I really don't want, like 'AOL tryout' and it will take some time to get rid of all that.

[Greg Hess]

Ernest,

 

The best thing to do is to completely wipe the drive and start over. (I'm not kidding). It takes less time to do that (after you download all the drivers first), then to sit there and try to remove all the thousands of megs of crap on there.

 

If you'd like a utility to get rid of all the crap after you've "add/removed" all the programs, run...

 

CCleaner (ie crap cleaner)

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

 

It works quite well, and also has a built in registry cleaner, and startup menu editor.

 

Btw in terms of laptops I can't recommend the duocore laptops enough. They are SLAUGHTERING the P4 based laptops. It's not even a contest. Avoid all full form laptops and just go with the power punch that the duocore's give you. A 2 ghz duo core laptop is basically like buying a dual 3.2-3.4 xeon that fits on your lap.

[Ernest Burden III]

Ernest,

The best thing to do is to completely wipe the drive and start over. (I'm not kidding).

 

Btw in terms of laptops I can't recommend the duocore laptops enough. They are SLAUGHTERING the P4 based laptops.

 

Wiping isn't an option right now. I put the thing in service as soon as I could copy over my network render client, the new laptop has been crunching images almost full-time since I bought it. And quickly.

 

Thanks for the cleaner reference. When I have some downtime I will deal with it all, right now the laptop is too busy paying for itself.

[Elliot]

Hello

 

Last year I bought a 4K laptop from Dell. It is an Inspiron XPS. It was a horrible nightmare; they duplicated my order and charged me twice on the credit card. It took them 4 months to correct the problem.

 

The machine is about the same speed as my 4 year old Toshiba. The Dell is bulky, heavy and the battery last about 20 minutes. The Power Supply is about 2 pounds and 2"x7"1.25".

 

Several years ago they took me with 4 Sager we bought on which we spent like 12K and they were no good.... they lasted only about 1.5 years and fell apart. Now I feel Dell took me with this XPS.

 

On my last trip to China (17 hours) the AC power cord on my seat was not working. I couldn't plug in the computer. The guy next to me had the same problem. However, he had a thin laptop (I don't know what brand name) with two extra batteries. He basically worked on his battery operated laptop all the way to China. He was using InDesign doing some kind of brochure.

 

During the last 10 years I have always looked for powerful laptops. We must have purchased at least 15 units. None of them have been any good. The only of the shelve laptop we bought for an emergency was the Toshiba. That was the best one we ever bought. I still carry it when I don't feel like carrying the heavy Dell.

 

Three months ago I left a 75 watt reading lamp about 1 foot away from the Dell Keyboard. The slight heat melted the keyboard. Unbelievable...... I have the extended warranty and Dell replaced the keyboard in three days.

 

Lately I have been traveling with the Digital Camera, the laptop and the LCD projector.... A two pound power supply makes a big difference. A few weeks ago I got to Paris at 7 am and the hotel was not ready until 4 pm. It was Sunday and their suitcase closet was open and I was afraid of leaving too much expensive equipment inside an un-attended closet. It was a rainy day I spent 9 hours walking around Paris dragging two briefcases with wheels. The next laptop we get I hope it could have a nuclear power cell and no batteries or power supply.

 

Greg's comments sound very logical.....

 

Thanks

Elliot

[marley6611]

WOW thanks guys! i went to powernotebook.com like you suggested and found an amazing thing!!!

http://www.powernotebooks.com/product.php?itemId=1296

i started off my laptop search looking for the largest sceen size they had and was disappointed when i only found 17" displays... this thing has 19" and TWO of the most powerful graphics card you can get from alienware, and for the SAME price i was going to pay!!!! I have an option for the processor between these two listed below, could u guys tell me what level of pentiums they compare to? they are comaparable to 3.2+ speed P4's right?

 

AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile MT-40 (2.2GHz 25W) w/1024KB L2 cache

 

AMD Turion™ 64 Mobile ML-44 (2.4GHz 35W) w/1024KB L2 cache

 

These are the graphics cards that come in it, I also wanted to make sure these are good cards for games, as i am a game developer and although workstation graphics cards like the quadro are powerful, theyre pretty useless if they have issues with playing my own games. This is a gamer card that will use the geforce drivers and not a workstation card right?

DUAL NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7800 GTX PCI-Express™ 16X Modules in SLI Mode w/256MB (512MB total)

[Greg Hess]

Ernest,

Completely understand! When you finally do get some downtime, I'd still recommend a complete wipe and repartion...better yet, pickup a new harddrive to swap into the laptop. That will net you..

 

1) Won't have to effect any of the files or programs on an already setup computer on one drive.

2) Gives you a brand new clean slate to quickly setup and install a new system

3) Gives you a spare drive thats completely setup to swap to in an emergency.

 

When I say wipe and start over, I don't mean use the dell restore cd's...I mean take a XP disk (or your os of choice), boot to it, delete all partions, create new ones, format, and install. Make sure you make a cd with the current driver sets from support.dell.com prior to doing this. If you forget to, just swap in that other drive and go .

 

Once the system is cleanly setup and updated with the latest drives, windows updates, and programs you want/updates, ghost the system using a cloner of your choice. (I use norton ghost). Save the perfect clones for a year or two down the road when you want to refresh the system as if it had a fresh install.

 

If you couldn't tell, I'm a firm believer in as many redundancies as possible. Backup drive, backup clones, backups on archival media, external hd's, and raid 1's keep mr murphy in the bahamas instead of your workspace.

[AJLynn]

To rehash a few threads:

 

Dual nVidia cards in SLI mode do almost nothing for 3D apps - they only improve game performance.

 

Every Intel-comptible chip out there outperforms the P4, including the AMD mobile chips. A P4 laptop makes no sense, especially with the Core Duo being available. But the desktop AMDx2 chip in a laptop also makes no sense now. The Duo performs as well as the AMDx2.

 

Since consumer-level notebooks now come with high-end gamer cards and Duos, buying an overpriced, huge, power-hogging, weird looking Alienware so you can have an AMDx2 and a high-end gamer card makes no sense. Laptops from companies like Apple, Acer and Toshiba with Core Duos and good gamer cards perform as well as those Alienwares, cost less, are lighter and smaller and have better battery life.

 

And backup regularly

[Greg Hess]

Just saw this today. (For dell owners)

http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38

 

Try and use at your own risk! Don't run if you can't afford downtime!

[Ernest Burden III]

Just saw this today. (For dell owners)

http://www.yorkspace.com/2006/04/38

Try and use at your own risk! Don't run if you can't afford downtime!

 

Another note to Dell owners--Dell often uses patched versions of drivers and even OSes. Re-installs or transfering software may not work as expected.

 

 

The Boxx version of that mega-laptop uses a mobile version of a Quadro card, so it's above 'gamer' level. However, the Boxx laptop can only take 2GB of RAM, while the Toshiba I just bought can take 4GB (assuming you can find the chips).

[marley6611]

To rehash a few threads:

 

Dual nVidia cards in SLI mode do almost nothing for 3D apps - they only improve game performance.

 

Every Intel-comptible chip out there outperforms the P4, including the AMD mobile chips. A P4 laptop makes no sense, especially with the Core Duo being available. But the desktop AMDx2 chip in a laptop also makes no sense now. The Duo performs as well as the AMDx2.

 

Since consumer-level notebooks now come with high-end gamer cards and Duos, buying an overpriced, huge, power-hogging, weird looking Alienware so you can have an AMDx2 and a high-end gamer card makes no sense. Laptops from companies like Apple, Acer and Toshiba with Core Duos and good gamer cards perform as well as those Alienwares, cost less, are lighter and smaller and have better battery life.

 

And backup regularly

 

how come it does almost nothing for 3D apps? i mostly thought the dual thing was cool because I plan to leave a second monitor at my workstation and plug it into my laptop for dual monitors, and with one card to each monitor it shouldn't have any display issues or framerate slowdowns right?

 

The main thing that i like about this laptop is the 19" screen, are there any other 19" screen notebooks outthere? this was the only one i found : (

 

also what do you mean by AMDx2? you mean 2 of these processors? so this laptop i'm looking at only has half as much processing as a core duo because it only has one AMD? i certainly don;t want to sacrifice processor speed if thereres faster out there for cheaper...

[AJLynn]

SLI is a nVidia technology for using two video cards on one monitor. Makes games faster, but not 3D apps. If you can use the second card for a second monitor, that's a good thing. But still, I wouldn't recommend this kind of notebook. It's huge, and heavy. 14.5 pounds with battery! That's twice as heavy as a regular heavy notebook. It's a stretch to call it "portable". By the time you upgrade to 2 GB RAM, add Windows XP Pro and upgrade the CPU it's over $3300, and it's not even a dual-core. It renders much slower than my lighter, less expensive MacBook, the dual nVidia cards aren't all that much faster than my ATI X1600 and you don't even get a dead pixels guarantee without spending an extra $200.

 

It's a ridiculous computer intended for people who would otherwise have to carry their full tower PCs to their video game parties.

 

Compare to the MacBook Pro 2GHz or this Toshiba, for example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16834114207 With the Toshiba you even get RAID (two hard drives split the work - makes it faster).

 

Get either of those and upgrade to 2GB and you're good to go. (Buy Corsair memory from Newegg - the Apple Store people tried to sell me the second gig for $300. They told me it was more expensive because "Apple only buys memory from the center of the silicon plate." Riiiiiiight. The Corsair was $90.)