08Mar In search of a new Laptop.
It takes a lot of computer power to edit DSLR footage natively. I normally do most of my editing back home on my desktop, but I finished up early today, so I though I might head back to the motel, startup CS4 on my laptop, and do a little bit of editing. My laptop was a force of nature only a few years ago, but now it’s beginning to show its age. An Intel dual core, with 4 GB of ram, and GeForce 7950 GTX graphics card just doesn’t cut it. Those specs wont keep up with native editing, so i’m trans-coding to mpeg-2 and at my current pace I probably wont be doing any actual work tonight.
Even with GPU assisted trans-coding, the progress bar is saying 1 more hour. I think it might be time to buy a new laptop. My current desktop is running a first gen i7 (2.66GHz) Processor with 12 GB of ram and an NVIDIA GTX 285 2 GB graphics card and it cuts through DSLR footage like butter. The GTX 285 allows me to take full advantage of CS5’s mercury playback engine, which probably helps speed things up. It looks like there is now a very simple script hack that allows you to add pretty much any NVIDIA card with 1 GB of DDR3 ram and CUDA support to CS5.
With that in mind it looks like the top items on my laptop “buy list” should be an i7 processor, an NVIDIA graphics card, and 6 GB of ram. I’m also tired of carrying around an 18 inch laptop and I’ve noticed that you can now get 1080p resolution in a 15 inch form factor. The new generation of laptops also look to be about 4.5 pounds lighter then the monster I currently carry around. Battery life will probably always be a joke on a monster laptop, so I’ve given up on that, but it might be nice to get one of those 9 cell batteries so I can stay unplugged for at least an hour.
All of this day dreaming about laptops has got me convinced. I think this weeks work might disappear into a new laptop. If any of you out there have already made an upgrade in this department let me know what you ended up with. I’ll probably have a little time to decide since these guys only send out checks every two weeks.
March 8th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
The newest laptops with the latest Sandy Bridge intel CPUs (2nd generation Core i5 or Core i7 2xxx series) are either out or coming out shortly, that will be similar in performance to your desktop Core i7 920. Since you’ll need a Geforce card for the mercury playback engine or MPE, hack, unfortunately the choices are limited. Many of the new laptops from HP (dv6t and Elitebook), Dell (XPS 15/17), primarily feature AMD Radeon video cards, so they won’t work with MPE.
Here’s a few laptops I’ve been looking at as well
15.6″ with Core i7-2630QM or higher quad core CPU, 1080p LCD and Geforce graphics
MSI GT680R laptop with the fast Geforce GTX 460M
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4201/msi-giveaway-gt680-sandy-bridge-notebook
Sager NP8130 or NP8150 (rebrand of Clevo OEM/ODM laptops) with GTX 460M or 485M
http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-clevo-sager-notebooks-ct-95_51_162.html
currently a backlog
Lenovo Thinkpad W520 with Quadro 1000M or 2000M – com
http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/tabook.pdf (search in this guide for the W520) – coming out late March. The T520 will have a slower Geforce GPU, which may or may not work with the MPE hack.
Asus also has their G53 and G73 Republic of gaming LCDs with latest Sandy Bridge.
12″
Looking at the forthcoming X220 thinkpad — no 1080p or Geforce for MPE, but very portable, and will have the fastest dual core 2nd generation Sandy Bridge.
March 9th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Thanks for all the info! I’ll definitely check all of those out. Dells XPS 15 also has a lot of the specs i’m looking for, so it might all come down to price.
March 8th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Studio 1 Productions also has a very comprehensive list of both desktop and mobile GPUs that should work with the hack for the Mercury Playback Engine. Note its missing the latest GPUs like the Geforce 5xxM series, which are mostly refreshes of the 4xxM series, plus the forthcoming Quadro 1000M and 2000M mobile GPUs.
http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5.htm
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-2000M.47316.0.html
(latest mobile GPUs here)
March 8th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
MacBook Pro hands down!!!
March 8th, 2011 at 11:58 pm
Took the words out of my mouth. Once you go to a Mac, you will never go back.
March 9th, 2011 at 9:32 am
Macbook Pro no questions about it! Amazing performance, our industry already uses them, Sleek and sexy design and interface, very light, LOOOOONG battery life, and very very dependable. You’ll be happy you switched.
March 9th, 2011 at 11:30 am
I just picked up a new 15″ Macbook Pro with an i7 Sandy Bridge, 8GB of RAM, 1GB of Video RAM, and the High-res screen upgrade. Haven’t done any heavy duty editing with it yet, but it handles my 5D Mkii footage just fine.
March 9th, 2011 at 4:24 pm
Don’t think I’m going to cross the line over to Mac.
March 9th, 2011 at 5:04 pm
Hey Deejay, just wondering: Which editing program do you use on your PC? I was under the impression you use Final Cut Pro for your videos, but now I don’t know.
I need a computer upgrade, badly.
March 9th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Not a final cut pro user, though I’ve given it a try a few times. I use premiere cs5 for most things. I use After effects quit a bit and it works seamlessly with premiere. Plus sound booth is very handy if you need to clean up audio tracks.
March 9th, 2011 at 8:00 pm
How much did your desktop rig cost?
March 9th, 2011 at 8:45 pm
With all the upgrades $1200 from dell.