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Laptop Suggestions.

muller252muller252 Posts: 45
in The Commons
Hi Guys, I had an apple Mac for years and it's eventually died. I'm considering buying a windows based laptop. Has anyone any recommendations as I want to run daz/studio, Photoshop, illustrator.

Comments

  • TheMysteryIsThePointTheMysteryIsThePoint Posts: 3,306

    I think any discussion of using a laptop for any kind of 3D rendering has to begin with "Do you really need a laptop?". Is portability a must? Laptops are expensive relative to performance and do not manage heat well.

  • vrba79vrba79 Posts: 1,548
    Well to run DS well, since Iray the only in-software render engine(Filament is a preview engine), you're gonna need to find a laptop with a beefy Nvidia chip set.
  • memcneil70memcneil70 Posts: 5,679

    I have both type of systems, MacMini M4 and MacBook Pro M1 along with laptops Windows 11 RTX-4080, Windows 10 GTX-1080, desktop Windows 10 GTX-1080Ti. My Windows laptops are gaming rigs and the W10 was bought not for art but for editing and being able to be mobile. With DS6, my Apple computers are able to use Filament now. I have both DS4 and DS6 installed on the MacMiniM4.

    Do you travel and need the laptop for when you travel?

    Or is the computer going to be used primarily at home?

    If you buy a laptop, are you prepared to replace it often as the Nvidia cards cannot be upgraded?

    Can you afford a computer where the RAM is 3x larger than the Vram? (I think that is the recommended ratio.)

    Can you afford to upgrade the laptop as needed as opposed to updating a desktop?

    These are some of the basic questions I struggle with as I faced my old iMac and Win 10 computers aging out.

  • csaacsaa Posts: 974

    TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

    I think any discussion of using a laptop for any kind of 3D rendering has to begin with "Do you really need a laptop?". Is portability a must? Laptops are expensive relative to performance and do not manage heat well.

     muller252,

    Continuing with that "Do you really need a laptop" counterfactual, leasing a laptop is another option. HP's Omen Gaming Subscription offers laptops with NVDIA GPUs. I haven't tried it myself, but I always thought someone, someday, somewhere might find this option useful.

    Cheers!

  • Peter WadePeter Wade Posts: 1,682

    If you don't need portability but don't wanr a full size PC you could consider a mini PC. I've got a mini PC with an RTX 4070 Super GPU with 12GB vram, i9 CPU with 24 cores, 64 GB RAM and a 4TB SSD and it runs Daz Studio well enough for me. It was quite expensive and it's physically bigger than most other mini PCs but a lot smaller than a standard desktop. 

  • muller252muller252 Posts: 45
    I want to thank you all for your very positive and I formative replies. My job takes me away a few days a week. I much prefer desktops, and I know they're most suitable. I'm not technically up to speed like some of the people on here. Am I correct in thinking that the underlying message is to go for a desktop?
  • TimberWolfTimberWolf Posts: 331

    That would be my recommendation as well. For the price of a Windows laptop with, say, a 16GB GPU and 64GB system RAM you could almost certainly get both an equivalent desktop system and a decent business laptop which would be more than capable of running Photoshop and Illustrator. Also note that a laptop RTX5080 GPU, for example, is a fair bit inferior to a desktop RTX5080.

    Other folks have highlighted upgradeability issues and potential heat issues.

    Sadly, right now is not a great time to be buying PC hardware. The price of RAM has gone through the roof and is still rising, storage prices have shot up and Nvidia have announced a pivot away from consumer-grade CPUs towards data-center/AI units. They're not exiting the market entirely but the woeful supply of many Nvidia GPUs will only get worse in the future leading to, you guessed it, rising prices. With that said, as you absolutely need to buy something, buying now will be better than waiting another six months!

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,904

    I use the high end gaming laptops from MSI. They have good ventilation (if possible try to avoid the thin laptops, often the ventilation isn't that good) and you can get custom configurations. If your in the US, I've had great luck with Xotic PC making custom builds at very competitive prices. Another option would be a Sager/Clevo laptop (many custom shops also sell these under their own branding). I've used Sager/Clevo laptops in the past and they are extremely good quality. I had to move away from them due to my needs for a laptop with128Gb of RAM, and they didn't support that muich. 

    As others have pointed out, laptop GPU's are not up gradable, but a well ventilated laptop can last for several years. For my needs, a desktop would not be practical. But my "play" laptop is also my work laptop, so it serves double duty making the cost more justifiable. All of the images in my gallery have been done on a laptop.

  • GordigGordig Posts: 10,679

    If you must have a laptop, I'd actually recommend skipping the NVidia GPU and getting a fairly barebones laptop for scene setup while you're away from home, then rendering on a desktop.

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,224

    I've used laptops for years with no problem. Get the one with the best Nvidia graphics card you can afford and get as much internal storage and memory. I didn't burn them out I changed them to upgrade the graphics card.

    The specs of my present and last laptop are in my sig.

  • miladyderyni_173d399f47miladyderyni_173d399f47 Posts: 2,695

    We are replacing my 11 year old laptop, which did pretty well rendering Iray for the record. We're open to either laptop of desktop but leaning towards laptop For Reasons That Seem Good To Us. I am looking at RTX 30xx, 40xx, & 50xx. Does the next Daz Studio (DS5? DS2025?) support the 50xx? 

     

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 12,996
    edited April 1

    Yes, DS2026/DS6 does support 50xx cards.

    Post edited by Leana on
  • miladyderyni_173d399f47miladyderyni_173d399f47 Posts: 2,695

    Leana said:

    Yes, DS2026/DS6 does support 50xx cards.

    Thanks, I couldn't bear to go through that long thread trying to find the info.

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