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New MBP and 1,000,000 polygons

post #1 of 8
10/24/07 at 2:20pm
Thread Starter 
Greetings,

I am going to purchase a new laptop here pretty quick. I have narrowed down my choices to a Macbook Pro with the Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT, a thinkpad T61p with a Nvidia Quadro FX 570m or a Dell 6300 with an Nvidia Quadro FX 1600m.

I use a variety of graphic programs (CS3, raw image editors, ArcGIS). I am certain that most of my programs will run splendidly on the 8600 card but what about the GIS apps? In particular, for rendering of visual data up to 1,000,000 polygons, will the workstation cards (Quadro FX units) perform much better than the 8600? If so, how much better? Is there a video card expert in the room who can show me a tool for comparing these cards under such conditions?

One tool I would really like to try is the purchase of two of these machines with the option to send one back. Does Apple have a good return policy?

Your advice is appreciated.

bob
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post #2 of 8
10/24/07 at 3:25pm
Honestly, since i don't work with GIS I couldn't answer that, and I suspect that will likely be the case with most here. The best I could do would be to create 1 million polys in Blender and see how it handles it, but even that won't answer your question as the software is likely to be very different.

In as far as Quadro vs GeForce, I would say the Quadro is likely to be a bit better suited, but that is a complete guess pulled out of my arse based on I suspect the workflow is very similar. If the workstation cards are reccomended with it in general, then that carries over just as much when dealing with Macs, as they are really just PCs. Does that mean you wouldn't be able to use a GeForce? Probably not, as I mentioned I do work in Blender
fine with standard GeForce cards. Just that a workstation card might act slightly better.

Seablade
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post #3 of 8
10/24/07 at 3:49pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks seablade,

How about this angle - will the MBP card push my apps faster on the 15.4 vs. the 17 inch screen? I understand that less area will probably display faster than more area but what about the rate at which those pixels will light up?

And yet another angle - PC vs Mac - what about running mathematical calculations on those 1 million polygons. If I understand what I have heard it should make no difference whether I am running the intel chip on a mac or a pc based laptop, not unless the RAM effects calculation rates...?

bob
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post #4 of 8
10/24/07 at 4:57pm
Quote:
How about this angle - will the MBP card push my apps faster on the 15.4 vs. the 17 inch screen? I understand that area will display faster than more area but what about the rate at which those pixels will light up?
Due to the resolution difference, you will probably have faster response from the 15.4 inch. Is that what you are asking?
Quote:
And yet another angle - PC vs Mac - what about running mathematical calculations on those 1 million polygons. If I understand what I have heard it should make no difference whether I am running the intel chip on a mac or a pc based laptop, not unless the RAM effects calculation rates...?
If you remove the TPM chip that apple uses to check for validity of an OS X install, you have what most people deem a 'pc' laptop. Just with EFI instead of BIOS. The Apple laptop IS a pc laptop really. It really will make no difference on an identically spec'd pc laptop vs mac laptop if you are running the same calcs. The chip is identical in both. RAM will to a very limited extent affect the speed based off latency and speed. This is very minimal, and minimal enough I don't worry about it myself, though others might be able to give you more information on it. Seablade
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post #5 of 8
10/24/07 at 5:26pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks again Seablade. I think I am suffering from hyperbuyer disorder right now. I live remotely so cannot see anything I buy before I pull the trigger. Would be a lot easier if I could just go into a showroom and test a machine out. How bright is the matte screen? What does the high def screen look like? Will the high def screen work well if dumbed down to lower rez (in case the text is too small for me to see)?

Disregard these questions if you are sick of being pestered.

Thanks again.
b
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post #6 of 8
10/24/07 at 7:43pm
Okay, the 15.2" MBP has the most beautiful screen I have ever seen. The primary reason for this is the LED backlight. This offers an incredibly bright, even backlight. This difference is even more positively startling when viewed next to a traditional CCFL backlit screen.

baidarkbob, have you asked about Apple's return policy? Although, I'm not sure if Apple offers returns on custom configured notebooks :\

From what I know, CS3 and image editors are CPU rather than GPU dependent, so Intel Core 2 Duo has you more than covered there. I have not had any exposure to arcGIS, but I have had experience with Solidworks/Solidedge 3-D parts modeling software (some of the most resource taxing software I have yet seen). There are engineering students at my univ who run these programs on regular Macbooks with Intel Integrated graphics on Win XP - no sweat, runs great.

...and that card is like the Flintstones car compared to the Porsches you are planning on getting.

I looked at some system requirements for arcGIS Engine SDK? on Win XP Pro and it seems that the only video card requirements are that it be compatible with OpenGL 1.2. I don't know much about OpenGL, so maybe somebody else can shed some light on how the 3 cards in question handle this.
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post #7 of 8
10/24/07 at 10:03pm
I used ArcGIS this summer at work on a 3GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM and who knows what graphics card. Depending on how you have it configured, the 8600m should be great at it. If oyu have it set up so that it has to call the database everytime you so something, then it isn't that important what you are running it on, it will be slow.
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post #8 of 8
10/31/07 at 11:53am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the feedback guys. I went ahead and purchased an MBP. I will let you know how well it runs ArcGIS via bootcamp once I get back to my office and an xp sp2 disk.

b
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