buying new laptop need advaice

[ww667]

Hey guys i am looking around for a new laptop.
And i think i have found some thing hat fits the budget and preformance is okay as well.
I was just wondering do you think this will be enof to be able to handle most of my needs for experimenting with VFX
Thanks



Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 » 2 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB
Display/Screen » 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide UXGA Display with TrueLife™
Memory » 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
Hard Drive » 120GB1 7200rpm Hard Drive
Graphics Card » 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6800 Ultra
8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability
Wireless (802.11b/g, 54Mbps) 1 Gigabit Network Card and Modem

[VFXTalkDotCom]

i got one of those 17" widescreen dell xps's with a 2gig pentium m and it rocks, the specs are a lot similar to what you have here. its more than enough for after effects and combustion which is probably where you will be starting off

for experimenting along the lines of compositing and vfx then you actually have a bad-ass system here as the pentium m's are close in performance to p4's at 2x the clockspeed.

if you want to do a lot of 3d or heavy rendering then you may want to look into a p4 based system (like the alienware laptops) or a amd based system as they havwe much higher floating point performance

-jah

[ww667]

Hmm well i will need to do some particle effects on it as it is my most favorite thing to do on 3ds max.
As well i am planing to do some gaming on it when nothing else comes in mind.
For rendering i have half disent PC at home
P4 with HT at 3.63 GHz (originally 2.8)
3 gigs of ram and 600 gigs of storage.
Video card i will not say as people will start pointing fingers at me (radeon 9800 pro :bagonhead )
So for me it is a bit more about doing dome roto and comps on laptop as i have some long days at work and lots of free time.

[VFXTalkDotCom]

though you may want to check this thread out

http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=5265

since the mobile quadros are out now...

[ww667]

Yes i know ;)
But how i was saying i am thinking about this one is just because price is good.
LAPTOP » Dell XPS M170 » 2GHz/2GB Ram/120GB HDD - $1499
And that is in canadian money ;)

[artikki]

I'm going to buy a macbook pro and I´m wondering, how big is the difference between graphic card having 128MB or 256MB GDDR3 memory? I´m going to use the laptop for FCP and After Effects. Is that 128MB extra worth of upgrading?

[ww667]

Thanks for advice guys, but idea of getting new laptop is on hold again
I did put money together and was about to buy it till reality strike again and it was moved down in must have list.
How ever i am now owner of really nice designer sofa and half descent PDA.
Well i know i will bring this thread back to life in couple months so i think it can still stick here for some time ;)

[VFXTalkDotCom]

artikki,

i would go for the 256mb if you can afford it as it will allow you to drive a hi-res monitor at home or at work... my laptop has 256mb and it drives a dell 24 inch at 1920x1200 when i am at home wihtout breaking a sweat.

i also think that since you cant upgrade the graphics you will be stuck with what you get for a few years to come so max it out now or you will regret things in a year or 2...

-jah

[VFXTalkDotCom]

dream on

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1710?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

512mb nvidia graphics card / duo core