Member Suburban_Ghost Posted June 23, 2016 Member Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 Hey everyone, first time posting on the forum, been using and loving 3dcoat for almost a year now. I have a few questions regarding laptops and 3dcoat. I'm planning on getting a laptop specifically for 3dcoat and photoshop to use as a mobile workstation. I Need an alternative from when I am away from my home workstation, and specifically I am looking at the MSI G72 Apache. http://www.xoticpc.com/msi-ge72-apache-pro-070.html i7 6700, nvidia 970m, 16 gb ram, etc. At home i run a workstation i built about 2 years ago. It has a NTEL I5-4670K 3.4 GHZ processor, amd firepro v5900 workstation card, and 8gb ram. It runs 3dcoat great, and does everything i need it to. Though researching and comparing benchmarks on laptops point to the msi g72 running even better/faster than my workstation. I'm trepedatious believing that a laptop could ever out perform my pc, even though its a coupple years old. So here are my question: what should i expect from a laptop with these specs handling 3dcoat? Are these specs overkill? Or underkill? If so what would be better or more suited? i lack the first hand experience with laptop hardware to really understand what to expect. I am hoping someone here might have a bit of experience! (looking specifically at msi over other laptops of same caliber due to its cooling vs size) thanks in advance, and i look forward to hearing anyones input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 23, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 That should work pretty well, but your home workstation probably needs 16GB of RAM or more if you plan to work on some fairly large scenes in the Sculpt Room. 8GB is really on the low side, especially for the CPU you have. What it amounts to is elbow room. At 8GB's you don't have much of it. 16GB, enough for most projects you may want to work on. 32GB, don't have to worry about running out of RAM 99.999999% of the time. The Graphic card will dictate just how well you can tumble and move about a scene when you have a lot of objects with a lot of resolution. That laptop should do a bangup job. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Suburban_Ghost Posted June 23, 2016 Author Member Report Share Posted June 23, 2016 Thanks Abn. Your absolutely right! I've been running into slow downs because of that and have been planning on upgrading that as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Rebelismo Posted June 27, 2016 Member Report Share Posted June 27, 2016 I was able to get a Lenovo P70 recently with a 17 inch screen, Intel Xeon, Quadro M600M and 64GB RAM. The nice thing is that it also has pen input. I use it for all of my 2d, 3d, and compositing needs when I'm on the go. It's good to be able to use a stylus (wacom bamboo 2-in-1) with software like Zbrush and 3Dcoat, or even Photoshop, Manga and Paintstorm. The cool thing is that it also has thunderbolt 3 inputs in case I ever want to plug in an external gpu as the quadro is not that powerful. Having said that, the MSI does look like a nice machine :). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 27, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 27, 2016 Yeah....I'm glad he pointed it out. I was actually thinking about buying a laptop soon, and that looks like a good model. Will probably wait until they come out with the GTX 1080m/1070m, but this one is still a beast, and that price is pretty much the same as on Newegg...which is like the gold standard in PC/Electronics retail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 27, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 27, 2016 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=MSI+GE72+Apache+Pro-070&N=-1&isNodeId=1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Suburban_Ghost Posted June 27, 2016 Author Member Report Share Posted June 27, 2016 Dang, the lenovo looks like beast. How does it handle 3d software? Oh, and Abn, upgraded my ram yesterday, i can actually move around my hi-poly sculpts now! Haha thanks for the tip. I was also gunna hold out for the 1080m, but i have a feeling laptops sporting em will still be pretty expensive despite the desktop versions being so affordable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 28, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 14 hours ago, Suburban_Ghost said: Dang, the lenovo looks like beast. How does it handle 3d software? Oh, and Abn, upgraded my ram yesterday, i can actually move around my hi-poly sculpts now! Haha thanks for the tip. I was also gunna hold out for the 1080m, but i have a feeling laptops sporting em will still be pretty expensive despite the desktop versions being so affordable. True, but I doubt they will cost anymore than the current models now. Especially if one waits til the holidays. You can usually catch a sweet deal on black friday or thereafter. BTW, I was going to elaborate....that CPU you have has quite of bit of horsepower, so you don't want to bridle it with just 8GB's. Also, Quadro and Firepro cards are generally better than their game/consumer card counterparts in terms of handling large models and scenes, but at 2GB of VRAM, that too is a limiting factor...if you plan to use it for any GPU rendering (ie, Octane, Blender Cycles, Furryball, Thea, Redshift, etc.) or texture painting with large map sizes. Lots of layers with 4k + maps may bog down a bit. If you can swing it at some point, you might take a look at one of those 1070's for your desktop. Then take one of those GPU renders for a test drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyHertz Posted June 28, 2016 Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 These days even 16gb is considered low end for a workstation, a lot of people are starting to use 64gb. Ram is so cheap that it's not that big of deal to completely max out the motherboard in most cases. fyi, NVidia has said they don't plan to make a 1070m/1080m card, and instead laptop makers will just be using under clocked versions of the desktop cards (to keep heat / power draw down). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Rebelismo Posted June 28, 2016 Member Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 17 hours ago, Suburban_Ghost said: Dang, the lenovo looks like beast. How does it handle 3d software? Oh, and Abn, upgraded my ram yesterday, i can actually move around my hi-poly sculpts now! Haha thanks for the tip. I was also gunna hold out for the 1080m, but i have a feeling laptops sporting em will still be pretty expensive despite the desktop versions being so affordable. I've been working with Zbrush, 3dCoat, Maya and Houdini. Also tested out renderers like Octane, Redshift and Arnold. So far so good. Most mobile cards are definitely pricier than their desktop counterparts, and generally not as good (memory and speed). That's why I'm really considering the external GPU options for the future. At this point I also have a 3-GPU desktop workstation and can tell you that 2 cards are always better than 1, and 3 work better if the renderer scales well. Are there any models you wanted to test in 3dCoat in particular on a mobile set up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Suburban_Ghost Posted June 28, 2016 Author Member Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 Abn, I am for sure going to snag a 1070. That'll be next after i recooperate from the laptop purchase. Do you have any experience with overclocking? Rebel, actually i do. I have a hi-poly sculpt I wanted to see how a laptop handles. If i can gey by sculpting on the laptop and doing renders on my desktop i'd very happy. Its just a matter of actually being able to be productive while being away from the workstation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted June 28, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 28 minutes ago, Suburban_Ghost said: Abn, I am for sure going to snag a 1070. That'll be next after i recooperate from the laptop purchase. Do you have any experience with overclocking? Rebel, actually i do. I have a hi-poly sculpt I wanted to see how a laptop handles. If i can gey by sculpting on the laptop and doing renders on my desktop i'd very happy. Its just a matter of actually being able to be productive while being away from the workstation. I understand that, for sure. As for overclocking, I have my CPU overclocked a bit, but I prefer not to do so with my graphics cards. Many aftermarket cards are already OC'ed from the factory and most of the newer models of NVidia cards have a GPU boost function built in. When it senses a heavy load, it will bump the clock speeds up quite a bit and then throttle them back down slightly based on temps. That CPU you have on your desktop can probably OC to 4.2ghz very stably without breaking a sweat. Just search youtube for OC'ing your model of CPU, write the specs down and follow along. Probably a good idea to shoot well below the max numbers they provide, and make sure you have a really good CPU cooler + lots of case fans to push/pull fresh air in from the front (and side to blow cool air onto your Graphic cards) of the case, and exhaust all the heat out the back. Whenever I render something out, I just open the case side door, put any kind of table/floor fan right in front of the open side and let it run full blast, to keep the system as cool as possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Suburban_Ghost Posted June 28, 2016 Author Member Report Share Posted June 28, 2016 14 minutes ago, AbnRanger said: I understand that, for sure. As for overclocking, I have my CPU overclocked a bit, but I prefer not to do so with my graphics cards. Many aftermarket cards are already OC'ed from the factory and most of the newer models of NVidia cards have a GPU boost function built in. When it senses a heavy load, it will bump the clock speeds up quite a bit and then throttle them back down slightly based on temps. That CPU you have on your desktop can probably OC to 4.2ghz very stably without breaking a sweat. Just search youtube for OC'ing your model of CPU, write the specs down and follow along. Probably a good idea to shoot well below the max numbers they provide, and make sure you have a really good CPU cooler + lots of case fans to push/pull fresh air in from the front (and side to blow cool air onto your Graphic cards) of the case, and exhaust all the heat out the back. Whenever I render something out, I just open the case side door, put any kind of table/floor fan right in front of the open side and let it run full blast, to keep the system as cool as possible. Awesome! Thanks for all your help! Really appreciate it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Member mercer Posted July 16, 2016 New Member Report Share Posted July 16, 2016 Your choice was good, also you may want to check Asus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New Member mercer Posted July 16, 2016 New Member Report Share Posted July 16, 2016 http://pcgamerhome.com/gaming-laptops-under-1000/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted July 16, 2016 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted July 16, 2016 1 hour ago, mercer said: http://pcgamerhome.com/gaming-laptops-under-1000/ Ugggh. I had an Acer laptop once. Very cheap materials and finish. I won't buy another. ASUS and MSI are top notch brands. Lenovo is IBM, essentially, and they are pretty good too. But Acer is the cheapest of the cheap, and it shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolyHertz Posted July 16, 2016 Report Share Posted July 16, 2016 9 hours ago, AbnRanger said: ASUS and MSI are top notch brands. ASUS products are generally good quality, but the company itself is notorious for having terrible customer support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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