Need a BADASS LAPTOP!
polycounter lvl 18
Hey all, just was hoping to get some help on what would be the best laptop out there. I am looking to spend about $3,000, and want something that is robust enough to handle large files in 3d studio max, zbrush, and photoshop ( if it could handle all 3 programs at once that would be awesome ) Thanks in advance for the advice!
Spark
Spark
Replies
As I say in pretty much every *need a "work" laptop" thread, this is just a colausal waste of money. You think that you want something beefy and awesome, but it is very unlikely you'll actually use your laptop for work. What do you think you're gonna go, take your laptop to the beach and do 3d stuff? Nahh, you'll be at the beach.
In addition to that, these "hardcore" laptops are so large, heavy, generate so much heat and have such absolutely horrid battery life that you will virtually never even bring the thing anywhere, and you'll need a proper desk setup to even use it. In addition to that, working on a laptop is just completely uncomfortable, you'll need a proper mouse and possibly keyboard, at which point, what does your laptop offer over a nice desktop?
3000 is just insane for a laptop that is more of an idea than a reality, if you need a beefy system that is semi portable, simply build a PC with one of these compact cases, you can build an excellent mini-case system for $1500 or less. And I mean high end quad core, 12 gigs of ram, SSD, high end video card "excellent".
For that budget you could probably make two extremely high performance desktops with all the bells and whistles. Hell you could have four half decent monitors for shits and giggles while your at it. Wait, Earthquake pretty much summed up most the valid reasons so yeah, what he said.
sandy bridge cpu, gtx460 gpu, 8gb ram, 1080p screen, dual hard drive slots for 1x ssd boot drive and 1x storage drive.
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/G73SW-A1-Republic-Gamers-17-3-Inch-Gaming/dp/B004I1J864[/ame]
Spark
The Ben Heck Show: Military Grade Portable PS3
I've used it to make some pretty heavy characters (in zbrush, mudbox & XSI), no problems. Light weight (as far as a 17" laptop goes), great battery life too.
I wouldn't recommend the Alienware btw, has a few flaws that are inexcusable for its price.
Asus make good stuff and the one that PolyHertz suggested seems awesomely powerful.
Also it doesnt look like garbage like most other pc laptops :P
[ame]http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Slate-EP121-1A010M-12-1-Inch-Tablet/dp/B004HKIIFI[/ame]
It is an Asus laptop that uses wacom technology. I have always wanted a portable cintiq, but still can not figure out how I would get around not using a keyboard... Definitely not what are you looking for though, but it could be cool in the future.
Here you go. Quadro graphics for hardcore rendering.
I went with the Antec Dark Fleet myself ( nerd bad assery ).
I sort of wish I had waited for the "portability" and customization of the new lanboy cases.
The yellow model looks like it would be at home mounted on a bull dozer.
Along with it's shock resistant airmount harddrive mounts and radiator optimization...
Unlike a laptop, you could have an easily portable watercooled system.
[ame]
[ame]
*raises hand*
Spark
And the performance is not such a worry; as soon as you geta half decent one (which mainly means don't get suckered by manufacturers to believe that something like an HD3100 is a decent graphics card. I think once you pay 1700 dollars or something you should get something decent that runs what you want. Just don't expect blazing (desktop-level) speeds.
To put this in perspective: back in 2006 I remember running Max 9, Photoshop CS2, Firefox and a game I was modding for at the same time without much problems. That was on a 1.6ghz single core AMD Turion with an 128mb ATI X600 and 512mb of system RAM... I think it cost about 1500 euros back then (should be the same in dollars).
https://secure.pctorque.com/shopping-cart.aspx Here is one that I customized from Lenovo, and again which one is better for the money: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/builder.workflow:Enter?sb=%3A00000025%3A00002A75%3A&smid=3B10ECA8EB78454180D484668504D02E
Both of these have gone above the price I wanted, but intend to use this as my primary for a while as well to help the hit of the cost.
Spark
some powerful laptops, i think the graphics cards are interchangeable like a desktop. most laptops have integrated graphics cards.
I agree. It's got a quadro too. That's pretty nice.
yup! I absolutely loved my Thinkpad t60p! tough like a tank. I also loved all the power-user features - i.e. swap the DVD for a 2nd HDD or for an extra battery. how awesome is that?
What lead me to buy a macbook tho was the display - the resolution was extremely high for just 14" but the colors were not good enough
i7 840QM, 8GB of RAM... although it can take up 24, 2 HDD slots and a further slot for a SSD drive. Oh, also a Firepro M7820 - however I am tempted to whip that out and try and locate a 3800M instead. Its very powerful and am actually doing more work on this than my main rig.
Incredibly happy with it. Yes its a big 17inch laptop, and it is quite heavy, but not much different from most other laptops of similar size. Battery life is a couple of hours, but you can't really expect huge battery life when running a system with this kind of spefication.
http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/qosmio/X500/X505-Q898
not sure about the size of files you want to handle....most characters would be fine (zbrush at mills and realtime in max) but my 17"macbook pro crumbles with some of the lightmapped levels when i wanted to show all jazzy like but these were 120Mb in game levels so in maya it was probably a shear lack of memory only 4gb on mine... you can get 8 now
Anyone care to enlighten their reviews on it?