RevitGary Posted March 8, 2009 Share Posted March 8, 2009 I am considering a Goboxx 2500 or Dell M6400. They are both about $6,000. I need the portability so I am trying to decide between these 2. They seem to have the same specs. Dell offers a solid state drive. and has convenient docking accessories I am assuming Vista 64 bit is the way to go. all comments will be greatly appreciated Precision Mobile M6400 Intel® Core™ 2 Quad QX9300 (2.53GHz, 12M L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB) Windows Vista® Ultimate 64-BIT SP1, With media NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M, 1.0GB Discrete 8.0GB, DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM, 4 DIMMS 128GB Dell Mobility Solid State Drive GOBOXX W2500 Intel® Core 2 Quad Processor Q9650 (3GHz) (Quad-Core)with 1066/1333 MHz System Bus Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition 64-Bit NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 M 1GB 8GB DDR2 800 (2 SODIMMS) Built-In 7-IN-1 Flash Memory Reader 320GB 7,200rpm SATA Drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 8, 2009 Share Posted March 8, 2009 Seriously? You could have a new 17" Macbook Pro and 2 quad core workstations for that money. Meanwhile these things are using desktop hardware which makes them heavy and kills their battery life, and all they'll do is render faster - not run Photoshop faster, not run the Max viewport faster and not run Revit faster (okay, maybe a bit faster but not a lot) - because almost nothing uses 4 threads efficiently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 8, 2009 Author Share Posted March 8, 2009 I need the portability. Any other comments about these 2 systems? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyST Posted March 8, 2009 Share Posted March 8, 2009 my comment: damn. I'd go with dell. They sound a lot more reliable than goboxx. only the hard drive at the dell could use a little more space. if they can get a 2nd non solid drive with more room installed, I'd go with that. P.S. That's some great config... makes me droool.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 They're both good, I'd lean toward Boxx for the customer service - Dell's is good but the Boxx people understand vis work and know their Autodesk and Adobe issues. Also a 128GB drive isn't enough if this is going to be a primary workstation. Everything else looks good - 8GB, 3GHz quad - this would be a hell of a good box for rendering work (though I'll say it again - if your primary need is Revit, which I mention because of your username, look for a jacked-up dual core and try to get ATI video hardware in it). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 9, 2009 Author Share Posted March 9, 2009 I can get a Intel® Core 2 Duo Processor E8600 (3.33GHz) (Dual-Core) instead of quad. Would this be better? My work will be 50 50 Max and Revit NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M, 1.0GB Discrete seems to be the only video card option on the GoBoxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 When I said dual core I meant a mobile Core 2 Duo, so you can get it in a more normal laptop package (with less weight and more battery life). But anyway, here's the tradeoff. Anything "interactive" - you Max viewports, working in Revit, etc. - would be a slight bit faster on that Duo and that Quad would be about the same as or slighly faster than a mobile Duo of the same speed. Where the Quad beats the crap out of it is when you render in something that multithreads well, like mental ray or Vray. But this is a 2" think, 12 pound notebook. Add the power brick to the travel weight because without it you're not going anywhere. Of course, it's your call. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyST Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 I'd go with the quad. The speed in viewport would be awesome in either case(especially with that quadro 3700), but the quad core would give noticeably better rendering times, hence I say... go with the quad. 12 pounds? this hardware is worth the weight. make sure to buy a spare battery while you are at it. P.S. seems to me that dell offers better ram/hdd... so I'd still go with dell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Don't get scammed by DDR-3 RAM, it doesn't matter for rendering on a Core2. And the Boxx can have 3 hard drives. Forget the Dell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 9, 2009 Author Share Posted March 9, 2009 I am not concerned about battery life. This is for taking to work and bringing it home on daily basis. This isnt meant to be a laptop. ( it weighs 15 lbs ) it is a portable workstation. Whats a power brick? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ihabkal Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 it is that small brick shaped box you plug into power and then it has a cord that goes into your laptop. it converts 220V (or 110V depnding on where you live) into 9V or 12V (depemnding on your notebook needs). I tried large notebooks and found them hard to carry around especially if you do it everyday. I also used to buy expensive computers and found it is not worth it. Now I carry a 2.7 pounds Sony. I found that using desktop cpus in small boxes is a stupid thing, they overheat. They are great in winter, but you will feel the heat in summer, plus their overheating causes stability problems. But the new core2 cpus maybe are cooler than the old Pentium 4 and might work in these small cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Hi All, Hey Gary - as you indicated that you are doing about 50-50 Revit and 3DSMAX, one workflow I can imagine is to be multitasking between multiple instances of Revit and MAX (and maybe Photoshop). I'd further a guess that you could probably maximize your efficiency if you could be "background rendering" on two or three cores in MAX/mentalray while continuing your design work in Revit (or in a nother instance of 3DSMAX) In this case, you are probably right to be looking at quadcore CPUs over dualcore. The Dell is a nice machine - but it simply can't keep up in terms of rendering/multitaking performance compared to a true desktop quadcore CPU running at a considerably faster clock speed and a 33% faster front side bus. *PS - we do offer SSDs for both the promary (OS) drive as well as the onboard RAID options. I'm anybody on our saleteam would be more than happy to discuss your needs with you and help you determine the most cost-effective configuration. Cheers, Adam Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Listen to Ihab and Adam, both are wise in the ways of computer shopping. I'm going to offer one more idea just because I hate seeing people spend money inefficiently when there are other options: If you buy two desktops with 2.66GHz i7's, 12GB RAM, high spec Radeon cards and good 24" monitors - one for work, one for home - each will outperform the laptop option, you can use a portable pocket size hard drive to hold your working files and you'll save about $1000, and you can leave overnight render queues on the office PC when you go home. Because of Autodesk's home use license policy if you are on subscription you will only need to pay for licenses for your office PC and your Autodesk vendor will be able to provide you another set of licenses for home. With the money you saved you can buy a smaller laptop for your portability needs that's not Revit/Max spec. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Listen to Ihab and Adam, both are wise in the ways of computer shopping. I'm going to offer one more idea just because I hate seeing people spend money inefficiently when there are other options: If you buy two desktops with 2.66GHz i7's, 12GB RAM, high spec Radeon cards and good 24" monitors - one for work, one for home - each will outperform the laptop option, you can use a portable pocket size hard drive to hold your working files and you'll save about $1000, and you can leave overnight render queues on the office PC when you go home. Because of Autodesk's home use license policy if you are on subscription you will only need to pay for licenses for your office PC and your Autodesk vendor will be able to provide you another set of licenses for home. With the money you saved you can buy a smaller laptop for your portability needs that's not Revit/Max spec. Quoted for agreement. Look for a software solution to your needing the hardware to work at the office and at home. I tried carrying a Dell 17" lump with me for a while. It soon gets boring. $6000 is a whole lot of money. You can buy a car with that and it wont be obsolete in 3 years. I bought a workstation, 7 render nodes (all quads) and peripherals for around $7000 two years ago.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 9, 2009 Author Share Posted March 9, 2009 "If you buy two desktops with 2.66GHz i7's, 12GB RAM, high spec Radeon cards and good 24" monitors - one for work, one for home - each will outperform the laptop option, you can use a portable pocket size hard drive to hold your working files and you'll save about $1000, and you can leave overnight render queues on the office PC when you go home." Thats brings up another question. What if I am at work and I apply material maps. I go home and the maps are obviously not applied because of a different path. Is it possible to get maps applied from two different hard drive locations without reapplying them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Erstad Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Keep going, this is interesting. Can AJ just assume the role of CTO for the CGA board? Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Well there are several answers to the 'missing maps' problem. 1: you can carry a plug and play hard drive that mirrors the drive at home and work. 2: you can network from home to the drive at work 3: you can just do your material work at the office then archive the file to take it home 4: you could work over a virtual network (virtual desktop or whatever its called) There's probably more... Im not sure what your situation is. If you are an employee, I am really hoping you are not planning to spend 6 grand on a laptop so you can help your boss out, so Im guessing you are your own boss? Either way, my solution is to keep work at work and play at home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ihabkal Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 "Thats brings up another question. What if I am at work and I apply material maps. I go home and the maps are obviously not applied because of a different path. Is it possible to get maps applied from two different hard drive locations without reapplying them? that is a matter different from making a wise purchase, it is more related to work habits. I work alone in my office and from my home, and I move files around in a small hard drive. at first you forget files and maps, and you get frustrated, but with time you get more organised and get used to "remembering" which files you need. I have a folder on C:\localmaps where the materials in the max file point to, and also all Xrefs and all Vray proxies. it exists in all my computers so no matter what computer I use, I just copy the maps for this project into that folder. I also have a maps folder in each particular job's folder which contains maps for this job just so that I have them separate. this C:\localmaps also contains Irradiance maps and is very useful when rendering on a renderfarm. All machines find all files needed because the references to everything in my max file are to this folder. which is replicated on all my machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 There are a lot of ways of making the maps work, Tommy gives some that do. This is what I used to do when I had to do this kind of thing: -Configure the machines so all relevant paths are the same. Same hard drive letters, install locations, user name. Install Max identically. -On each make one or more directories in the same location(s) for working files - this includes Max files, render outputs, and anything I used to call "xrefs" (by which I included actual Xrefs as well as Vray meshes, texture files, IES files, linked DWG, etc.) and any other files you will change but need access to wherever you work. -Make the same directory(s) on an external hard drive. Pocket sized hard drives in 250-500GB are cheap these days and easiest to work with. -Use a file sync program on both computers with an automated setup to sync the working directories and the external drive with 1 button. Run this whenever you start working and whenever you stop. One program I've used is called Allway Sync. Now whenever you're working you have the sam file structure, and as a side effect you have 2 backups and one is "offsite". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 BTW if anybody needs a CTO send me a PM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soulctrla Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 Listen to Ihab and Adam, both are wise in the ways of computer shopping. I'm going to offer one more idea just because I hate seeing people spend money inefficiently when there are other options: If you buy two desktops with 2.66GHz i7's, 12GB RAM, high spec Radeon cards and good 24" monitors - one for work, one for home - FINALLY SOME SENSE - THIS IS THE ANSWER MY FRIEND. The laptop will suffer from battery life so badly with all that kit in it if operating at full chat that its practically a static machine anyway. FORGET a portable workstation - Two machines is a much better way out ! and probably with some change mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted March 9, 2009 Share Posted March 9, 2009 "...The laptop will suffer from battery life so badly with all that kit in it if operating at full chat that its practically a static machine anyway...." Actually, GoBOXX should get from 1 1/2 to 2 hours under fairly heavy use. I think this is a great discussion. Very valid points being made. The criteria for solving a problem must be decided, prioritized and then weighed against the available options. Ultimately, an artist buys the tools that are best suited to his or her needs. It's not always about what's cheapest. It's about what's the best fit after all the factors have been considered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 "If you buy two desktops with 2.66GHz i7's, 12GB RAM, high spec Radeon cards" Is that dual 2.66GHz i7's or one in each machine. is - ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB - a good card or should I get better? Thanks to all!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted March 10, 2009 Share Posted March 10, 2009 Single i7's. The dual version would be the new or about to be released Xeons which would be much more expensive though if yu can budget it, they'd be very good. As for the video cards - I'll let somebody else field the "which Radeon" questions, I just say Radeon because ATI cards have fewer bugs in Revit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevitGary Posted March 10, 2009 Author Share Posted March 10, 2009 I am buy a new computer for the first time in 4 years. So I am a bit confused. Will an i7 with 12 gigs of ram really be enough for me? My models are very heavy on the geometry. Is the i7-12gig set up comparable to a dual or quad core for handling and rendering heavy geometry. I often have max and autocad / photoshop running at the same time. The i7 setup sounds good but will it really be enough for me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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