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17 vs 15 " laptop for game art ?

gnoop
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gnoop sublime tool

Foe pretty a while I want to buy a modern laptop with 3080 GPU. For switching work locations. Working from hotel room sometimes while traveling .

I don't care about battery life since I can't imagine I would ever be working in absence of electrical outlet but I do care about screen.

I once worked full time at 15" CRT monitor and had no issues at all (in early 90th) . But never at laptop really. Had a few and they always been just cheap internet toys.

Still would like to hear people oppinions. Is 15 too small and you regretted not buying 17 one ? Are any 15 would suffer badly from thermal throttling in both CPU and GPU and thus unusable ?

I have no driving license or a car to just keep the thing somewhere on backseat. So laptop weight in a backpack is a key too?

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  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666

    If you want a 3080 then definitely go for a 17" to get better thermals. Keep in mind it's not just about how cool it runs when you buy it, laptops tend to get warmer as they age due to dust buildup and such unless you regularly take them apart and clean them. They also tend to have higher maximum ram capacity compared to 15" laptops.

    For a 15" I'd recommend going with more mid-range parts like a RTX 3060, since it'll produce a lot less heat / use less power.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool

    I put my hands on a few 17" models and they always seemed too big for me for a true mobile solution I could took with me in a backpack rather than drive around in a car.

    It's like DSLR camera which I own but never use really . Too big and heavy for minimal advantages. And since such a laptop of a class is an expensive thing and I couldn't find it in lease-to-own to try first I kind of hesitant of 17 ones and couldn't make my mind for a year already.

  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage

    I haven't owned a workstation for some years. There really is no practical solution to this except the size of your budget and if you are fit enough to carry the weight. Personally I wouldn't bother with 15, but as mine is mainly for home use, as long as there is a HDMI outlet who cares? My 17 is connected up to an external 27" acer. Works just fine.

  • Neox
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    Neox godlike master sticky

    if you get a stand thermals are quite good to be honest. i decided to go with a 15" for my mobile workstation because i had a 17" before and that shit is clunky and heavy and the opposite of mobile. the 17" screen will still be too small for real usage so i also decided that 15" is fine.

    works nice but for anything serious i certainly need a proper screen.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool

    Thanks for opinions guys , Neox is your 15 one suffer from throttling , I am aimed at MSI GS66 Stealth with 3080 16gb vram. Does anyone know something about it ?

    Does it have any hidden surprises, marketing tricks to sell crap? What's the hell is max-Q in videocard specification?

    It's a first 15" I see with 16 vram I need badly for gpu Octane renderer and Substance Designer.


    ps,. From googling max-Q for an hour it looks like thermal throttling basically . But the question still is if it worth extra price or better be just 3060 but not max-Q ? Or they all do same in laptop GPUs? and 3060 would still drop performance badly?

  • Neox
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    Neox godlike master sticky

    it works for my work. it certainly struggles with some heavy ue5 things we do. but for my main line of work, max, zbrush, substance its fine. i havent run into any bad issues yet, but what i do is usually also not the craziest demanding on either gpu or cpu. baking at 64x sampling 4k, yeah okay its not as fast as my home or work pc but it does the job without dying on me. no octane rendering or heavy substance designer graphs on my end

    i have the Gigabyte AORUS 15G YC-8DE2450SH if it helps.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool

    Thanks Neox. Could you perform Octantbench 2020.1 test on your laptop please.

    I wonder how would it compare to my current desktop GF980ti ?

    It's going to take 5 minutes. It's what my typical test renders and texture bakes take usually. So I hope it would be before it gets overheated and the throttling drop the performance down so could be quite informative for a real work tasks performance.

    I see yours also max-Q one so I wonder what it will be?

  • Neox
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    Neox godlike master sticky

    the laptop got a little louder than usual for my use. but nothing too bad really.

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool

    Thank you very much Neox

  • gnoop
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    gnoop sublime tool

    Anyone with 17" laptop post Octanebench here too please

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