Buying a work laptop need advice

noosence

So I have a lot of wasted time where I could be working on art but do not have access to my PC. So I am buying a laptop. I need something that can run the Substance package well. I used designer and painter a lot so it needs to be able to keep up(not expecting anything overly amazing since this is just for the times when I'm not by my desktop).

This is the one I'm thinking about getting. Anyone have experience with gigabyte machines? Good build quality, manageable heat, good battery life? Also how does system ram vs memory card ram matter? And finally if anyone else has any other ideas throw 'em at me. Thanks again =D

Beard3D Bandit

Doesn't look too shabby in my opinion Mike! Never really had a work laptop for art etc, so I'm actually interested in this myself.

Let us know if you get it and try it out etc.

beefaroni

Asus has a gaming laptop I think with a slower GPU but 16GB of ram and a quad core processor. I'll try to pull it up later

Jerc

Yes, the 8GB of ram is the only issue on this one, it's really the minimum nowadays.

Add3r

I cannot recommend my Y series Lenovo enough. I does in fact have a 960m insteaed of a 980m, but damn is it a SOLID laptop (and also 300 less + new instead of open box + 16gb of RAM). I have the Y500, first gen of the line, and 3 years later it still feels and runs new. I do however take very good care of it, it should be able to take a beating with its aluminum monitor shell and chassis. Its quiet, not that hot (definitely not too hot as to where you need a lap cooler), and battery life is about 2hrs while under moderate load. Overall, a super super high quality build for the price.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834319108&cm_re=lenovo_y50-_-34-319-108-_-Product

ZacD

I got an acer aspire v15 nitro black edition vn7-591g-70rt recently that I'm pretty happy with. The track pad sucks, but the screen is great. I made sure to get an IPS display because poor viewing angles on laptops really bother me. It was $900 and works well with everything I've thrown at it. And I have the option to upgrade to 16 gigs of ram and to add a M.2 SSD and keep the main HDD.

beefaroni

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T7XRH2A/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944687722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B009M2XB3U&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1B393AP46N4WBYBDTJ19"]Amazon.com: ASUS ROG GL551JW-DS71 15.6-Inch FHD Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M Discrete Graphics - Free Upgrade to Windows 10: Computers & Accessories[/ame]

16GB of ram
Only 960M instead of 980M

You save ~$500.

ZacD

If you get the ROG, get the IPS version.

noosence

Chris will the 2gb of GPU ram not hurt me in the end? Would it be better to spend a bit more and get a system with 16 gb of RAM and maybe 6gb or higher GPU ram?

Fomori

Add3r wrote: »

I cannot recommend my Y series Lenovo enough.

Cool. I just bought the Y50 discounted today.

beefaroni

noosence wrote: »

Chris will the 2gb of GPU ram not hurt me in the end? Would it be better to spend a bit more and get a system with 16 gb of RAM and maybe 6gb or higher GPU ram?

Oh interesting I didn't know the 980M had 8GB of VRAM. It's only DDR3L though. I wonder how that compared with GDDR5 for memory hungry programs (Painter, Mari, etc.

Hmm...

ambershee

I found the 980M to be fairly inadequate when working with modern game engines (e.g. UE4). At this point in time, I would actually tell you to consider not buying a laptop

ZacD

A 980M is close to a desktop GTX 780 or 970, which should be fine for UE4. There are laptops with the desktop GTX 980 in them.

TheMadArtist

Well, I have this from work:
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m6800-workstation/pd

And it is able to run Max, After Effects, Substance, all just fine.

ledyr

i have 970M, 16gb of ram and some i7 and I am pretty satisfied with the power.
UE works good (laptop gets quite loud then )

Its in CLEVO / Sager ..whatever so if you want to make it cheaper i think you can go with 970M instead of 980M

anyway I do recommend using laptop for working, its not bad as some people say, of course it's not that powerful as PC but it has other adventages

noosence

So I found another one, same price range, not an open box deal, and has 16gb of RAM, and 6GB OF VRAM that is GDDR5. The CPU is also 5th gen. Also I realise this is the second gigabyte I have posted and I don't have a preference for them they just seem to be the best bang for the buck I have been able to find =D My only concern might be the monitor quality, but I don't know how much that will actually bother me. I need to look more Into the sagers.

Tobbo

I've heard that the Gigabyte laptops have some really loud fans. May want to look into it some more before deciding on a Gigabyte.

beefaroni

This was just announced. Looks pretty nice
http://www.msi.com/news/2124.html

I wonder how much it will cost with these specs.

JacksonTaylor

I think Lenovo sounds s good choice with reasonable price and good battery life. Honestly, I've had one.

edgar10

Budget?
Size screen?

edgar10

JacksonTaylor wrote: »

I think Lenovo sounds s good choice with reasonable price and good battery life. Honestly, I've had one.

I have a Lenovo laptop that's lasted me 3 years so far and will still run smoothly

http://gaminglaptopunder1000.org/best-cheap-gaming-laptops-under-500-dollars/

glenatron

+1 million for the Asus ROG G laptops! They're pretty powerful as is, capable of Substance, UE4 etc., really easy to add more RAM, but the killer thing is the cooling on these beasts. Mine's never broken a sweat over the 2 years I've had it, where other laptops have folded like wet flannels.

noosence

I ended up buying this one. So far it's awesome. I don't know about the fan loudness? To me it seems reasonable, definitely not louder than my desktop 980 ti. It has also been able to run everything I have thrown at it, even painting at 4k in painter was super smooth. I am going to keep putting it through some stress tests with zbrush and some high power usage games (GTAV and MGSTPP). But over all I am super pleased with it. The monitor also seems pretty good, I won't say it's perfect, but it is nice for this price range definitely. I will give it another update in the weeks to come to tell you how I feel it worked out. Thanks a ton again for all the help! =D