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Laptop for 3D animation/compositing and games

post #1 of 35
4/13/04 at 5:47pm
Thread Starter 
Been looking over these forums all weekend and have seen people with similar needs but I thought I would post my own so here goes:

The Reason why I need one:

Currently have a Powerbook G4 which I love but as you know Apple has like 2 games to play and it's not yet upto par with 3D graphics so I am selling it and getting a PC notebook. Plus I have a Dell 530 Workstation I bought in 2001 and it is getting quite old.

Main uses:

Maya, After Effects, some Premiere, Flash, Dreamweaver and of course Photoshop.

Secondary uses:

Basic computing needs like internet/email/finances (you know what I mean)

Gaming:

I have seen many new games that are to be released this year that I am looking forward to play plus I like to play games right now (Operation Flashpoint, COD, Blitzkrieg)

-spend no more than $3200

-will mostly be sitting at my desk or coffee table PLUGGED in to the wall so battery life is NOT a big concern.Wireless is nice (I bought a Netgear wireless router last fall for my Powerbook and it is charm).

-I do not mind the weight of it.

-Nvidia of Ati? We use Quadro 4 980 XGL cards at work with our IBM Intellistations and Maya works great with it (I have even put demos of COD on it and it runs good). I have a Quadro 4 700 XGL on my old Dell Workstation and it runs ok for games.

-Screen size. We use dual 21" CRT at work and I have a single 21" at home while my Powerbook G4 is 17" widescreen and has 1440x900. This tends to get a little cluttered but it could be from being at work all day on dual 21" with 1280x1024 on each and then coming home to 1440x900

Mmmmmm. I am trying to think of anything else. I have gon so many routes looking around (Alienware-we had a rep come in who had the same model AW I was looking at and she was not happy with the service or quality) I then looked at Voodoo, then Sager, then Dell and on and on.

I also realize that every company has its pains and all I can do is jump in and see how it goes.

I have little tech experience so I do not plan to open up my unit and add new fans or cards or coffee machines to it so.

I have seen many people have problems with video cards and cooling. Is the cooling issue mainly prevelant while using the battery or just in general? My Powerbook gets warm plugged in or on battery but no problems and no dead pixels and screen problems.

Suggestions?
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post #2 of 35
4/13/04 at 6:34pm
Looks like you could use one of the top range Sagers with their fast P4 processors and top of the line 3D cards, but I'll let the Sager experts on the board place their comments on that. Another option would be the Dell Inspiron XPS which has a killer WUXGA screen and 3D card.

They both have Radeons, and while ATI's consumer line drivers are not the best for pro-level 3D apps such as maya, they do work fine. I've used my Radeon 9000 and 9600 with Both maya and 3ds max along with others and they work just fine, except for some minor rendering inaccuracies with things like transparency and some Z-buffer issues, but not all the time. Nothing that would keep you from working, certainly.

If, however, you absolutely need workstation-level driver accuracy for your 3D card, look at the HP nc8000 with the FireGL2 card. It's basically a 128MB 9600Pro radeon with professional application drivers and a couple of added features - I am not certain but I think it adds hardware-accelerated wireframe and more accelerated lights for OpenGL.

NVidia actually makes the most stable consumer-level drivers when it comes to real 3D apps in my experience, but their current mobile hardware lineup is not keeping up with the latest ATI models from the 9600 and up.

Any modern top of the line PC notebook (especially if your money range is $3200) will rip trough all the other apps you mentioned (flash, etc.) like a hot knife through butter, racing circles around your Powerbook (I know, I own one as well). Even After Effects moves along swiftly on my lowly Centrino 1.3 notebook. Just make sure to have 1GB of RAM at least.
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post #3 of 35
4/14/04 at 11:01am
Cant help you, sorry, just wanna say that its cool you play Operation Flash point The bedst game in that genre

I have just ordered af ASUS M6N (ASUS M6800N), maybe u should take alook at that one, it has a f****** nice design But with all that money you got, i think you can get a much better one
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post #4 of 35
4/14/04 at 11:27am
That's a real HARD question. I've been asking myself the same over and over and got no clear answer after all... Fact is:

1) If you do modeling and ONLY modeling: the most important aspect is the videocard. Go for 128MB and radeon 9600 or 9700 or Quadro fx1000. What about cpu? well... that's real hard to answer. When modeling CPU power is mostly used calculating particles and or complex operations like booleans, optimizations, etc... Fact is: DUNNO what to suggest. I have opted (not yet, still have to make up my mind) for the most powerful centrino (1.7Ghz) still there's no benchmark nor nothing about 3d modeling usage. If not centrino, go for AMD64.

2) If you're rendering: (CRAZY YOU FOOL!!!! THAT'S WHAT RENDERFARMS ARE FOR!!!!!! ) take a P4.

Now you still have to consider a few facts:
Each aspect in order of importance/feature

Battery life:
1) centrino (pentium M)
2) A64
3) PIV ht

CPU Power:
1) P4
2) A64
3) Pentium M

What about screen res?
1)15.4 WSXGA/WUXGA (1680x1050 for WSXGA)
2)17'' (1280x1024 or 1400x800 depending on aspect ratio)
3)15.1 SXGA (1400x1050)

What about screen dimensions (not the same as res. beware!!)?
1)17''
2)15.4''
3)15.1''

My suggestion:
don't take a small screen size and take AT LEAST the same resolution you use on your deksop workstation (think about all those Maya panels fit in 1024x768 )
Go for a good and fast graphic card 128MB radeon 9600 or better
Choose CPU accordingly to your "on the go needs".

Final thoughts:
Mobile: Pentium M 1.7Ghz 1GB ram Radeon 9600 128MB 15.4 WSXGA
Power: P4 2GB ram RADEON 9700 128 or 256MB 17''
Mix: A64 1GB ram Radeon 9600 128MB 15.4 wsxga or better

Keep in mind: for 3d USAGE always go for AT LEAST 5400 hds or better 7200.
RAm ram ram!!!! never enough.

Maybe a spare battery or two if you plan to stay out of the plug for a while...

Hope it helps... (it didn't for me... I'm still waiting for some dothan notebooks or the like...)

Marco.

www.marcorolandi.com
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post #5 of 35
4/14/04 at 1:26pm
Thread Starter 
You have a very nice site Marco. Good design and layout. Is the landscape with the grass CG?

I will mostly use Maya for some modeling but your right most of the animation would be done on faster machines at work after I leave at night.

I like the 17" widescreen look of my Powerbook but 1440x900 is too small for any production whether it is Flash, Maya or Photoshop.

I have seen all this talk about the look of the machine (painted etc) I really don't care nor would I want these bright trendy colors and graphics on my laptop. So the look isn't a big deal, of course the athestics of my Aluminum Powerook looks much nicer than most PC laptops in my eye

A 7200 rpm HD is a must on my machine and since I usually have it plugged into a wall I don't care about battery life that much.

I just want something that has good support with it.

The Voodoo laptops look nice and even though they are more I think I would rather get one of those than a Sager or an Alienware. Right now it's Voodoo or Dell.
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post #6 of 35
4/14/04 at 1:28pm
Wait and see if the mobile iterations of the Geforce 6800 or Radeon X800 will popup. Should be a few months, but probably VERY well worth the wait if it does.

Keep in mind that the Geforce 6800 Desktop GPU requires 2 power Molex's, and recommended PSU is 480 watt. If a Laptop is to have a hope of using a similar architecture card, it is going to need the infrastructure for that.
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post #7 of 35
4/14/04 at 4:58pm
Yes the grass is full CG. you can find more of my work here:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php...5&pagenumber=1
and here:
http://www.cgchannel.com/gallery/lis...ist&artID=1311
Dunno why I'm really working too much and don't have the time to work again on my site.
WOOOOPS!!! OFF TOPIC!!!!!

Back to the lappy things: keep me informed if you find the perfect notebook for 3d use
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post #8 of 35
4/14/04 at 5:11pm
Check out the new HP zd7000 17" WVA screen with 1680x1050 Brightview. I got one and it sounds like it would fit your needs. See this thread for more info (benchmarks, pics, etc.):

http://notebookforums.com/showthread...5&page=3&pp=15
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post #9 of 35
4/14/04 at 5:14pm
Interesting topic, lets see how many of us are here.

As for the question i think i have made my mind and am getting a Fujitsu N5010. Beautiful screen, 7200 drive and 1 gig of ram for photoshop work, editing and comping, P4 for my IPRs.

It has a 64mb card but i dont think i will do really really heavy stuff with maya in it and to tell you the truth I have done professional work on worst cards.
Alienware has an upgadeable graphics card (a saeger model too) so you can go for that.

Let us know what you decide
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post #10 of 35
4/14/04 at 5:47pm
Anyone here ever tried the Pentium M with 3dsmax? can anybody give us the rendering time for some of the benchmark scenes? (like islands for example)
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post #11 of 35
4/14/04 at 6:29pm
Um...I dunno why nobody has said this, but I believe that professional high-end graphics cards (i.e. Quadro) run professional modelling programs like 3DS Max and Maya 1.5-2x faster than commercial high-end gaming graphics cards. The reason is simple; Radeons and GeForces are optimized for good frame rates, on-the-fly rendering with textures and AA and fast user movement, etc. That's usually not the case when you're developing...

I would say to consider screen size before everything else. If you're not doing intensive CPU work (reserved for render farms), then all you have to worry about is GPU power and probably not VRAM (since you don't need to load textures until render-time). You DO need a ton of RAM, but that's easily upgradable. I would say for screen, go for at least a SXGA/WSXGA+, if not higher.

As for a laptop suggestion, I'm aware that the HP nc8000 has a high-end graphics card.
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post #12 of 35
4/14/04 at 6:38pm
Datheron do you use your lappy for 3d modeling? if YES, can you provide some benchmarks on Pentium M with 3dsmax or maya?

As for the graphic card: it's the most important thing in the lappy. If you use Maya you should definitely get a very good OpenGL compatible card like the Quadro FX. Still, if you use 3dsmax you have two choices: have the quadro and use the maxtreme drivers from nvidia (very good!!!) or set 3dsmax to run in dx9 and get a radeon 9600 or 9700. Sure vram is not very important when modeling, still, at least this is valid for me, I do BOTH modeling and texturing. Therefore the more the better.. I didn't suggest the quadro fx in my previous post because there are very few vendors who actually sell it. Therefore the choice would have been quite small... (Dell and HP as far as I know)
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post #13 of 35
4/14/04 at 7:38pm
Well, we all must sacrifice to get the right laptop, right?

Yea, I use Maya on my notebook for modelling. I'll see if I can go grab some benchmarks...personally, though, Maya has been not as responsive as I'd like, and there have been a few artifacts when I'm modelling. Maybe it's b/c of P-M and its tendency to downgrade speed...

I used 3DS Max before, but now I stick with Maya....not too sure what kind of optimizations there are for a Radeon 9600, but my models have been simple enough to not warrant extreme optimizations.

BTW, I second the compliment on your website and the design.
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post #14 of 35
4/14/04 at 9:20pm
This may help you decide...let me know if you want Cinema2003 benchmarks, I have the Quadro FX Go700 & ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 to compare on the same machine, and will have the Quadro FX Go1000 as a third card for this machine by this weekend/early next week.
System (M60) specs below.
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post #15 of 35
4/14/04 at 10:52pm
Thread Starter 
We have a Dell m60 at work (we actually have a few now) that we are using to demo our interactive courseware. Not too bad. I need to load the PLE of Maya on there to see how it performs. I know our m60 is decked out (it was $4000+). I will try to check out the performance and give some reviews. Maybe even put a demo of COD on there
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post #16 of 35
4/15/04 at 7:15am
Thanks, thanks, thaaanks!!!!! It's about time!!! Finally some REAl 3D test and not the usual 3dmark crap. way to go!!!

Meanwhile, there's another main question that needs to be addressed. Since it really seems that the A64 is quite easy on battery life, there are some rumors that pretend that WHILE on max battery Centrinos will beat the c**p out of the A64, under heavy stress the systems perform with almost the same battery life (1.5 - 2 hours). TRUE????? Since 3dmodeling could be considered "stressfull" maybe the two solutions would last for the same time, being the A64 way more powerful than the PM...
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post #17 of 35
4/15/04 at 9:19am
T41p will meet all your needs just fine. Just because it doesn't weight ten pounds doesn't mean it cannot run with the big boys.
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post #18 of 35
4/15/04 at 10:30am
Thread Starter 
How do AMD processors handle Maya and other 3D/2D design apps? I've never used one before. That is my main concern to getting a laptop with one on their.
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post #19 of 35
4/15/04 at 10:38am
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=19978
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post #20 of 35
4/15/04 at 10:59am

I emplore you

Don't get an ATI card. It's better for games hands down, but Maya, Max, Lightwave, Particle Illusion and just about any other 3d app you'll find uses OpenGL for viewport rendering. The Nvidia cards are far superior to the ATI in OpenGL.

If you can afford it, get the Dell M60 with the Quadro 1000. Otherwise find a notebook with the go5700 in it. The problems the ATI card will give when modeling will drive you insane. I've tried it, i've learned.
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