Hi guys, bringing this topic up because I don't want to create a new thread about it. Has anything change significantly between now and the latest recommendations?
The last laptop I had from gateway was a tablet PC that had horrifically distorted viewports in 3d programs, making it mostly unusable for 3D work. But, that was in 2007, I figure laptop video tech should have improved in the last 3 years.
It's an HP dv7 base and it's on sale, from all I've read online it's about $200 cheaper than similar customized laptops, and HP is a decent brand I've seen in use around school.
Anyone got a better recommendation right now? I'll have to decide within the week since the sale ends on the 23rd.
My budget is actually pretty good, around $1800 USD, and this will become my main work computer as I've been having to work out and about. I don't have to worry too much about battery life, so 2-4 hour battery life is fine since I'll be able to plug in where needed.
I don't want a monster laptop, nor something that generates too much heat. This won't fully replace my desktop, it's just something to use while I'm on the road.
Of course, must run MAX and Maya, and games/game engines to a decent level to test and play in.
Well one thing thats changed is the Geforce 460m (w/1.5gb vram standard) for 15' laptops came out recently. The Asus G53JW-A1 is a pretty good one with the card that supports up to 16gb of ram, has backlit keys, a 1080p screen, and is within your budget. Same place I got my last laptop a few years ago:
Thanks for the link, the computer there actually fits my needs better.
Is ATI/AMD coming out with a competitor to the 460M any time soon? I'm not up on the state of the competition, but when I was shopping around last, ATI had better performance/power use to price ratio.
EDIT: a bit a searching found that the similarly priced 5870M definitely out performed the 460m, but the 460M had, of course, better heat and power consumption being a lower end card.
I also notice that the 15" laptop has higher resolution than the 17" screen. Have you had any problems with the smaller screen? Otherwise it seems like the higher resolution would offset the smaller screen. Not to mention the smaller screen would make the laptop more portable... but would this cause extra heat issues?
Noticed they also had 17" laptops in my price range as well.
Well the 15' laptop I have has a 1680x1050 screen, and I think it looks great, and with windows Vista/7 you can easily scale icons/text if you find them to be too small for your liking at your screens resolution. 17' are fine if your willing to put up with less portability and greater weight, but back when I was traveling all over 15' I found to be the best balance of performance+portability.
As for ATI vs NVidia, yea ATI has comparable cards to all of NVidias offerings already, but the Radeon cards seem to always have problems with different 3d modeling apps and shaders. If it was just for gaming would use ATI probably, but think anyone who gets them for working with Maya/Mudbox/etc. is taking a risk, one which you wont be able to do anything about after the fact when purchasing a laptop (gpus not being swapable and all).
Well the 15' laptop I have has a 1680x1050 screen, and I think it looks great, and with windows Vista/7 you can easily scale icons/text if you find them to be too small for your liking at your screens resolution. 17' are fine if your willing to put up with less portability and greater weight, but back when I was traveling all over 15' I found to be the best balance of performance+portability.
As for ATI vs NVidia, yea ATI has comparable cards to all of NVidias offerings already, but the Radeon cards seem to always have problems with different 3d modeling apps and shaders. If it was just for gaming would use ATI probably, but think anyone who gets them for working with Maya/Mudbox/etc. is taking a risk, one which you wont be able to do anything about after the fact when purchasing a laptop (gpus not being swapable and all).
I really think that arguement is overstated these days with 3d and ATi cards. Havent had issues relating to graphics card for about a year with the newer drivers.
Anyhow. The laptop he linked..
17.3 diagonal High Definition+ HP BrightView LED Display (1600 x 900)
Thats an amazingly low resolution monitor for that size laptop. Vertrucio unless you plan on plugging it in to an external monitor all the time. Look at something else. Pisses me off with companies making these supposed power houses then throwing shitty lower res monitors on (which then helps boost their standing in 3d marks because the overall res is lower so the numbers look better).
You could probably find something for the same price with a higher res and a 5670 if you dropped the blue ray.
I really think that arguement is overstated these days with 3d and ATi cards. Havent had issues relating to graphics card for about a year with the newer drivers.
I dunno about that, I still see threads where ati cards are believed to be the cause of issues with a fair bit of regularity. Just today was looking at this thread for instance:
Well, the laptop I was using with the distorted viewports was ATI, but that was years ago. Either way, I'm willing to check out the NVidia for a bit, just for the lower power consumption and less heat.
I haven't had such problems on my ATI desktop, but these are mobile GPUs so, I'll embrace competition and go with the 460M. A big plus is that NVidia has made all their mobile drivers universal, no need to go through the manufacturer to get laptop specific drivers. So, while I like ATI cards, the nvidia mobile chip works better for me at this junction, even though I don't like losing performance for the same cost, this is a work computer more than it is a gaming computer, so stability is higher priority.
Now I'm just torn between 17.3" or 15.6". I don't just work on 3D, I do 2D painting as well and larger screen sizes benefit both workflows. Though thankfully it's a painless decision to make.
I dunno about that, I still see threads where ati cards are believed to be the cause of issues with a fair bit of regularity. Just today was looking at this thread for instance:
The newer drivers only seem to focus on the HD series. That also is a mobility and older chips relied on the laptop manufacturer many times to make custom drivers.
Also if you like using anything that takes advantage of CUDA (like 3DCoat) you'll need to use an nvidia card.
Until we can convince him to use opencl. Versus a closed system CUDA.
Now I'm just torn between 17.3" or 15.6". I don't just work on 3D, I do 2D painting as well and larger screen sizes benefit both workflows. Though thankfully it's a painless decision to make.
A Large 17" with only a 1600X900 rez versus like a 15.6 with a 1650X1050 ish will give you MUCH more room to work with. Seriously. I dont think you realize how low rez that monitor is.
It's the 17" larger cousin of the 15" laptop that was recommended, that one has 1920x1080 resolution on the 17" monitor, same as the 15". If I go 17", I might as well get the 5870m version. Overall, the two are similar, the only thing is physical screen size, and portability.
I'm not impressed with CUDA, seems similar to the same mistakes voodoo3d made with Glide. Not supporting open formats to try and push expensive proprietary formats, when your main competitor already has a good product that supports those open formats. It's allowing your competitor to influence those formats that developers are way more likely to use without having to bribe them with incentives.
Replies
I have a HP Pavilion, it works fine for me working with 3d, zbrush and photoshop.
How is it on games? I understand the GFX isn't so great but I'm more of a casual then hard-core.
Have you tried things like TF2 etc?
Thanks alot man.
The last laptop I had from gateway was a tablet PC that had horrifically distorted viewports in 3d programs, making it mostly unusable for 3D work. But, that was in 2007, I figure laptop video tech should have improved in the last 3 years.
I'm considering picking up this one:
http://www.frys.com/product/6282180
It's an HP dv7 base and it's on sale, from all I've read online it's about $200 cheaper than similar customized laptops, and HP is a decent brand I've seen in use around school.
Anyone got a better recommendation right now? I'll have to decide within the week since the sale ends on the 23rd.
My budget is actually pretty good, around $1800 USD, and this will become my main work computer as I've been having to work out and about. I don't have to worry too much about battery life, so 2-4 hour battery life is fine since I'll be able to plug in where needed.
I don't want a monster laptop, nor something that generates too much heat. This won't fully replace my desktop, it's just something to use while I'm on the road.
Of course, must run MAX and Maya, and games/game engines to a decent level to test and play in.
http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=G53JW-A1&Category_Code=AS15&Product_Count=8
Is ATI/AMD coming out with a competitor to the 460M any time soon? I'm not up on the state of the competition, but when I was shopping around last, ATI had better performance/power use to price ratio.
EDIT: a bit a searching found that the similarly priced 5870M definitely out performed the 460m, but the 460M had, of course, better heat and power consumption being a lower end card.
I also notice that the 15" laptop has higher resolution than the 17" screen. Have you had any problems with the smaller screen? Otherwise it seems like the higher resolution would offset the smaller screen. Not to mention the smaller screen would make the laptop more portable... but would this cause extra heat issues?
Noticed they also had 17" laptops in my price range as well.
As for ATI vs NVidia, yea ATI has comparable cards to all of NVidias offerings already, but the Radeon cards seem to always have problems with different 3d modeling apps and shaders. If it was just for gaming would use ATI probably, but think anyone who gets them for working with Maya/Mudbox/etc. is taking a risk, one which you wont be able to do anything about after the fact when purchasing a laptop (gpus not being swapable and all).
I really think that arguement is overstated these days with 3d and ATi cards. Havent had issues relating to graphics card for about a year with the newer drivers.
Anyhow. The laptop he linked..
17.3 diagonal High Definition+ HP BrightView LED Display (1600 x 900)
Thats an amazingly low resolution monitor for that size laptop. Vertrucio unless you plan on plugging it in to an external monitor all the time. Look at something else. Pisses me off with companies making these supposed power houses then throwing shitty lower res monitors on (which then helps boost their standing in 3d marks because the overall res is lower so the numbers look better).
You could probably find something for the same price with a higher res and a 5670 if you dropped the blue ray.
I dunno about that, I still see threads where ati cards are believed to be the cause of issues with a fair bit of regularity. Just today was looking at this thread for instance:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70739&page=2
Also if you like using anything that takes advantage of CUDA (like 3DCoat) you'll need to use an nvidia card.
I haven't had such problems on my ATI desktop, but these are mobile GPUs so, I'll embrace competition and go with the 460M. A big plus is that NVidia has made all their mobile drivers universal, no need to go through the manufacturer to get laptop specific drivers. So, while I like ATI cards, the nvidia mobile chip works better for me at this junction, even though I don't like losing performance for the same cost, this is a work computer more than it is a gaming computer, so stability is higher priority.
Now I'm just torn between 17.3" or 15.6". I don't just work on 3D, I do 2D painting as well and larger screen sizes benefit both workflows. Though thankfully it's a painless decision to make.
Right there "x1400, its old I know"
The newer drivers only seem to focus on the HD series. That also is a mobility and older chips relied on the laptop manufacturer many times to make custom drivers.
Until we can convince him to use opencl. Versus a closed system CUDA.
A Large 17" with only a 1600X900 rez versus like a 15.6 with a 1650X1050 ish will give you MUCH more room to work with. Seriously. I dont think you realize how low rez that monitor is.
http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=G73JW-A1&Category_Code=
It's the 17" larger cousin of the 15" laptop that was recommended, that one has 1920x1080 resolution on the 17" monitor, same as the 15". If I go 17", I might as well get the 5870m version. Overall, the two are similar, the only thing is physical screen size, and portability.
I'm not impressed with CUDA, seems similar to the same mistakes voodoo3d made with Glide. Not supporting open formats to try and push expensive proprietary formats, when your main competitor already has a good product that supports those open formats. It's allowing your competitor to influence those formats that developers are way more likely to use without having to bribe them with incentives.