jogreen Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 I am just starting out and need to buy a laptop to run programs such as 3D Studio max, Viz 7 and Autocad 3D, any suggestions on what I should be looking for?! Should I be buying a PC or a Mac? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Smith Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 might want to read this earlier post http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/20217-pretty-good-computer-deal.html?highlight=laptop this laptop has worked perfect for me for 2 months now and is all i need in a computer right now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gus_webb Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 I don't know about the dells... A couple years ago (when I started grad school) I picked up a compaq laptop- 3ghz P4, with about a gig and a half of memory. It was faster than my work desktop (although not by a whole heck of a lot). This past fall, the power connection on the motherboard started freaking out, and the computer wouldn't charge all the time. Not that big of a deal to fix, really, but I was told it would have to be sent out, and that could take 3 weeks... as a grad student working on thesis, being without my computer for 3 weeks isn't an option. So I picked up a new dell, 2 gz core2 duo, and I'm convinced my old compaq was faster. At least for some things, anyway- rendering, it feels about the same, but I feel like the compaq was at least as good at multi-tasking. And I'm not alone- a couple others in my class were hit with computer problems that would take time to fix and made the same decision I did (actually, the same dell computers), and they have both said the same thing. I know it doesn't make any sense, but as it sits right now, I kind of wish I would've gotten something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 There must be something wrong with your Dell - it should render more than twice as fast as the old machine and multitask far better. The CPU is roughly equivalent to a dual 4GHz Pentium 4 (if there were such a thing). I've found that Dell installs a whole lot of useless crap, you could go through it and remove any programs that aren't useful, then make sure there's nothing running in the background that's hurting you. Use Task Manager to monitor CPU utilization while performing some complex tasks. But, it's true that Dell laptops have issues - mostly having to do with build quality and cheap parts (things like RAM and optical drives). With 2 Dell laptops in a row I think I had 5 broken optical drives and 3 bad DIMMs. A friend in grad school had an M70 that simultaneously had the hard drive and a DIMM fail, and to get at the bad DIMM required removing snap-off case parts and the keyboard! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted January 3, 2007 Share Posted January 3, 2007 I'm happy with my Dell laptop, its a core duo 2300 with a gig of ram, right now I'm rendering something in Max, playing music, burning a DVD and writing this post...it was the cheapest laptop I could find, only $699 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 There was another thread from last summer talking about laptops, and in it I ended up buying an Intel DuoCore Toshiba with a big 17" screen. Its been great. Like any other consumer computer it came with lots 'o crap pre-loaded. But that screen is a honey. And it renders nicely, since I had the RAM extended to 2GB. The speakers are tiny but sound really nice. So look at the high-end Toshiba models. They are stocked in stores like CompUSA. You could also look at the new Intel Mac notebooks, just remember that you will pay extra for the WinOS and that the drive capacity will be cut in half by your dual OS partitioning. Most of the time my laptop just sits there and renders over the network. But I can take it to work elsewere, too. I'm quite pleased. But I do my work mostly on a workstation, I'm not comfortable doing 3D on a laptop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I've found the solution to that hard drive space problem. The Windows partition is 30GB and FAT32 format, and I've installed a $50 Windows program called MacDrive that lets Windows mount the Mac partition as a read/write disk. All large files are kept on the Mac side. I've helped a couple people shop for laptops recently, and one thing I find annoying - they make these otherwise great laptops with dual cores and 1GB+ RAM, very nice screens, DVD burners... and a shared memory video card. So many manufacturers are doing this, and even the customizable ones often don't have a better option. A real video card would cost, what, $10 more? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHE Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Buy a Mac Book Pro 17"/Booth Camp. I got one last year and I have to say that it is by far the best laptop I have owned. It is silent, medium weight and it has a great battery life not to mention the awsome design and OSX. Ernesto Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 I've found the solution to that hard drive space problem. Excellent! Glad to hear it! I'll have to modify my advice on the Mac laptops. they make these otherwise great laptops...and a shared memory video card. So many manufacturers are doing this, and even the customizable ones often don't have a better option. A real video card would cost, what, $10 more? Sorry to be a shill for Toshiba. But the machine I bought is the cheaper of these two (but I had 2G put in, making it about $2500 last summer, less now). Note the Gforce cards with their own RAM: http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/cmod.to?coid=-30600&seg=HHO What does Mac do with their Intel laptops? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 Ooh, RAID and everything. Yeah, those are nice (not all PC laptops are created equal). As for Apple, the Macbook has the Intel GMA950 with shared memory (and the screen isn't high res - it's not a good laptop for 3D work). The Macbook Pro has an ATI x1600, which is pretty good - mine gets 2840 in Cinebench in MacOS. The lowest priced model has 128MB, the others have 256. BTW, when I was waiting in the Apple Store yesterday I downloaded and ran Cinebench on a Mac Pro dual-dual 3.0 just to se what would happen, and it gets 1560 in xCPU rendering. Mmmmm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antisthenes Posted January 4, 2007 Share Posted January 4, 2007 i say nothing beats a Toshiba tabletPC get a r25 customized Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samov Posted January 7, 2007 Share Posted January 7, 2007 take a look at the nx9420/nw9440 http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=78644 i have it and it's SUPER.... managed to play Farcry max settings 1680x1050 ON BATTERY for 2 h 30 min.... neverwinter nights 2 play really well too... build quality is excelent and the laptop is ROCK STABLE... NEVER GETS HOT... SILENT plus it has MXM... you can change the graphics card. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=68109 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amen Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 Hi, I just bought an Asus A8js. It is great and has a lot of power. core 2 duo t7200 (4mb cache) 2 gig ram nvidia 7600 with 512 mb ram 120 gig hdd 1440x900 14" display DVD-rw and only 2.5 kg weight It renders very fast. I like it a lot. Jan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Macpod Posted January 13, 2007 Share Posted January 13, 2007 cant afford that. would the following suffice for rhino+autocad+photoshop, doing simple greyscale spatialisation renderings? but whole city blocks would have to be rendered, albeit without any detail. Core 2 duo 1.66 2mb cache ATI x1700 (256mb+256mb) 1G ram Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 Sure. None of that requires too much power. Does 256mb+256mb mean the video card has 256mb and can allocate another 256 of shared memory (or Hypermemory or whatever they call it)? If it does, can that be turned off? 256mb is way more than enough for what you're describing and the other 256 would be much better used as system memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 Either one you buy be sure to check out if the manufacturer used highly explosive batteries. ....remember, safety first Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 Are there any manuacturers that don't recall their batteries if they find out they're explosive? Anyway, the probability that yours explodes is so low, I really don't think there's anything to worry about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horhe Posted January 14, 2007 Share Posted January 14, 2007 Are there any manuacturers that don't recall their batteries if they find out they're explosive? Anyway, the probability that yours explodes is so low, I really don't think there's anything to worry about. That was just a joke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aldo lanzi Posted February 7, 2007 Share Posted February 7, 2007 i have an hp dv 9030 core2duo 1,7 2gb ram 200 gb hd and render 1,8 times faster than my pentium 4 3,2 its cost 1600 in circuit city Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rotten42 Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 I'm looking at starting another business which means I'm goign to have to rely on a laptop more int eh future. Anybody have any experience with Voodoo or Dell XPS laptops? I know thay aren't cheap but I want to be able to run max, lightscape, Autocad and Photoshop on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 8, 2007 Share Posted February 8, 2007 XPS looks like they have good specs but, based on my policy of always advising people not to buy Dell laptops, I have to advise you not to buy one. I say that as somebody with a lot of experience with Dell laptops, from Inspiron to Precision. As far as the Voodoo ones: why? Why spend that kind of money on a laptop that's only slightly higher end than other ones available? Take a look at what HP, Apple and Asus are offering. Especially Apple - the 17" MBP is as high spec as Voodoos that cost $1000 more, can softmod up to FireGL v5200 (in Windows only) if you're into that kind of thing, is very well designed and is thinner, lighter and has better battery life than the competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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