Can I get some advice on what to buy.

[johnweir]

Hi

 

I don't know a lot about computers although I rely heavily on them for my work. I am an Architect and spend a lot time using the normal design programs (adobe suite, autocad, rhino 3d, 3d studio max, sketchup, etc.), but my computer is struggling a lot. My current laptop which I have had for around 3/4 years has started to become painfully slow, making it very difficult for me to work and nearly impossible to run more than one of these programs at a time.

I currently have a Dell inspiron 9400 with an intel centrino duo processor with 1GB ram. I want to buy a new laptop and need some advice about what is best for the small amount of money I have. I have around £800 or $1300, I don't really care what make it is I just want something that is powerful enough to run at least 3 of the programs mentioned above at once. I need to be able to flick between programs without it taking 15 minutes. I don't really want a MAC as there expensive and you can't run a lot of the architecture programs on them.

 

Also if anybody as any advice on how to speed up my current laptop it would be appreciated. I have already deleted as much as possible and cleaned the registry.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

John

[Slinger]

You may only need more ram. 1gb with some of those programs is lacking and i am sure this is what is causing the 'slowing' down you are talking of.

What speed is the processor?

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Might be time to defrag the hard drive. Heck, maybe the drive is just getting full.

 

A nice deep anti-virus anti-malware etc. scan may be helpful too.

[cadmunkey]

Hi John,

Well for £779 you can get a 16" dell XPS laptop with 4gig of ram and a 512MB ati graphics card. I am thinking about one myself at the moment actually and have been looking for a few weeks now. The Dell range seem extremely well priced for the spec. I'm looking to replace my Sony that died, and so far I've tried an Asus and an Acer laptop and both their screens were hideous to use, far too many uneven bright spots.

If you are willing to spend a little more you can get a hell of a machine from Dell whilst the sale is still on. An i7 cpu and 1GB graphics card for around £999 (350 off at the moment).

My advice would be to try to look at the machine before buying, alot of these modern screens are absolute rubbish. My friend has a Dell so luckily I have seen the screen and they are pretty good. Also consider MSI aswell as their screens are nice too.

I'd love to get another Sony but their price structure is crazy compared to everyone else but they definately have the best screens.

[Celtic_bhoy88]

I am also looking to buy a desktop on a budget but am not 100% sure what is best to get...

 

I have about the same price range £800-1,200 but am unsure where my money should be spent... I use max and curenlty render with mental ray but want to get into Vray more.. I also use zbrush...

I was origninally thinking of getting 4gb Ram and spending the rest on geting a quadro card eevn if a 512 as some of the models I work with can be high res... is it Ram or graphics card which effects slow down with Vray etc?

[Tommy L]

Ram enables larger, moire complex scenes but does not necessarilly increase render speed.

The graphics card does not affect render speed at all, it just influences display graphics (like rotating large models in the viewport).

The processor is the most inportant aspect of render speed.

 

For a budget workstation I would look at the following:

Latest Q series Intel quad OR I7-920 processor

Min 8 gig ram

NVidia GeForce 9800 or equivalent, any brand, dont go with a cheap quadro

64 bit operating system (either XP64 or W7, avoid Vista)

 

If you get a custom whitebox off ebay, it should fall in your budget.