buying a laptop, need halp on specs

Bruno Afonseca

I need a laptop but i'm on a tight budget, so, i'd like to know if one with the specs below would be able to run the latest versions of max, maya, mudbox, zbrush etc, without significant slowdowns, running on windows vista (working on game related stuff). might downgrade to xp if necessary.

256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
2GB DDR2 RAM
AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-57 (1.9 GHz, 512KB L2 Cache)

might get a core2duo if this is teh crap

so, what do you guys think? i don't have any experience with zbrush at all, so i'm kinda afraid...

Ryan Clark

I recommend upgrading to XP if this is a work machine. You'll benefit from the extra performance and RAM.

Ryan Clark

Tom's hardware has some benchmarks looking at 3D application performance in Vista. In general, 3D apps are much slower. Vista is not an OS for workstations.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page6.html

Bruno Afonseca

holy crap im convinced, no vista for me

but what about the other specs?

Ryan Clark

I'm sure those specs are fine for any apps you'd want to use. I believe Intel chips have an edge in terms of battery life, though. That may be something to consider if the laptop is for mobile use.