Need advice for a use laptop please

pixelquaternion

Hi Guy's,

I am on my second year developing my game  and i want to buy a use laptop to work outside and i need advice from someone with experience with laptop.

What i would like to use it for is mainly doing some low poly modeling with 3ds max and also working with substance designer and possibly painter.

Any tips regarding the specs and graphic card and how well could you see the screen outside on a sunny day + license allowed on laptop when you have one installation on desktop.

I also hope i can hook up my Wacom and space navigator but maybe i am asking too much here. I know nothing about laptop.

My budget is 350$ i know it's not much but i am talking about a use laptop not a new one. I saw a few at 299$ but the graphic card was not sufficient for basic 3d work.

My desktop will be use for the heavy lifting like working in Unreal or any heavy 3d scene i might have + rendering.

Thank for anyone sharing tips

Obscura

Don't want to disappoint you, but 350$ is nothing really, if you want to use substance applications. A decent videocard which is really needed for these, are around that price.Especially for a laptop, which is more expensive in general, than a desktop. But, maybe someone else can give you some pointer.

pixelquaternion

Found this on amazon old page but could probably find one used on Ebay and the spec seem to be good enough what do you think?

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Y580-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Dawn/dp/B009AEPQDI

PolyHertz

Up that to $450-500 and you should be able to get a decent used laptop. If you want to run substance designer and painter $350 just isn't going to be enough.

I'd say shoot for at least these specs:
CPU: Quad Core at 2.6Ghz
GPU: GTX 960M (equivalent to a desktop 750 ti)
RAM: 8GB (hopefully expandable to 12 or 16GB)
Screen: 1920 x 1080 (aka. 1080p)

pixelquaternion

Hi Guy's,

Thank for the replies and i finally found the best possible deal i think but the only drawback is that the cpu is an i7 620m 2.67 GHz dual core so i wonder how a dual core would be for modeling and general work?

The deal is a Lenovo t510 i7 620m dual core, 4 GB ram(will ad 4 more) with 512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® NVS3100M for a whopping 125$ so i think it doesnt get any better than this!

PolyHertz

The CPU isn't the main problem with that build, the lack of VRAM is. 512MB is below minimum spec for both Substance Designer and Painter, you probably wont be able to use them without serious performance issues. I used a GPU with that much VRAM up until about 2011, and even back then I had to write some scripts just to deal with memory management issues in 3DSMax (meshs would disappear at random due to not being able to fit in memory).

pixelquaternion

Thank for the advice guy's and i found a better laptop here at only 260$ wit a 3 month guarantee!

Lenovo Thinkpad W510 Workstation - Processor Intel I7-Q720 1.60Ghz quad core - 8GB ram - 750GB HDD  - video card Nvidia Quadro FX 880M 1GB DDR3 - lcd 15.6’’ .

At least now i know i will be able to run everything correctly!

 

PolyHertz

Read this: https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/tech-specs

Minimum of 2GB VRAM for both Substance Designer and Painter.

throttlekitty

@PolyHertz Have you ever heard of anyone (anywhere close to) happy with a lenovo? I've never had one personally, but some accounts from friends leads me to believe they're cheap for a reason.

PolyHertz

@throttlekitty I don't have much experience with Lenovo, sorry.

pixelquaternion

throttlekitty said:

@PolyHertz Have you ever heard of anyone (anywhere close to) happy with a lenovo? I've never had one personally, but some accounts from friends leads me to believe they're cheap for a reason.

As an indie who struggle to even eat correctly every week this price is the highest i can afford for my tight budget!

pixelquaternion

PolyHertz said:

Read this: https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/tech-specs

Minimum of 2GB VRAM for both Substance Designer and Painter.

No worry i can still use my desktop for this and the modeling and Photoshop will be done on the laptop. But thank for the link.

throttlekitty

pixelquaternion said:

throttlekitty said:

@PolyHertz Have you ever heard of anyone (anywhere close to) happy with a lenovo? I've never had one personally, but some accounts from friends leads me to believe they're cheap for a reason.

As an indie who struggle to even eat correctly every week this price is the highest i can afford for my tight budget!

Totally been there. Have you checked local ads or pawn shops?

pixelquaternion

throttlekitty said:

pixelquaternion said:

throttlekitty said:

@PolyHertz Have you ever heard of anyone (anywhere close to) happy with a lenovo? I've never had one personally, but some accounts from friends leads me to believe they're cheap for a reason.

As an indie who struggle to even eat correctly every week this price is the highest i can afford for my tight budget!

Totally been there. Have you checked local ads or pawn shops?
No i just look on the web for used laptop and found this one and i don't think i will get a better deal at least in my area. Thank for the tips!