Laptop suggestions please?

glennblackphotos

My renders are taking forever as I'm on a cpu based render setting because my graphics card is standard.

Do I need to get hold of a MacBook Pro or is there a cheaper laptop I can get that will have a decent fast graphics card please?

There are so many laptops it's a minefield, plus I need really good battery power as I live off grid.

any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

Macs do not, at this time, offer nVidia GPUs. Although a laptop is not the ideal form for a render box anyway - I'm not quite sure what the issue is, but you might consider using your existing laptop for away-from-home purposes, including content downloads, and getting a basic PC desktop with a good GPU purely for rendering (which also has the advanatge of not tying up your laptop)..

glennblackphotos

Richard Haseltine said:

Macs do not, at this time, offer nVidia GPUs. Although a laptop is not the ideal form for a render box anyway - I'm not quite sure what the issue is, but you might consider using your existing laptop for away-from-home purposes, including content downloads, and getting a basic PC desktop with a good GPU purely for rendering (which also has the advanatge of not tying up your laptop)..

the problem I have is I live on a boat so a desktop pc is going to take up one hell of a lot of power compared to a laptop with a GeForce card for example.

I live an away from home lifestyle permanently lol.

Richard Haseltine

There are Windows-based laptops with good nVidia GPUs, but I think they are almost always pretty power-hungry themselves.

nicstt

Best advice, unless there are space and portability reasons that warrant a machine that is less capable, get a desktop.

JamesJAB

Your best bet for an Iray rendering laptop will have either a GTX 1070 or a GTX 1080 as both cards have 8GB of Vram.
For these laptops you are looking at $1700+ for GTX 1070 ones and $2500+ for the GTX 1080.

Or if you have money to blow.... about $5000 and you want to give it to Dell.
Precision 7720 can be configured with a Quadro P5000 16GB GPU
 

glennblackphotos

Hmmm price wise the laptops are crazy!

is there such a thing as a budget desktop?

thanks.

DustRider

Something like this (http://www.pro-star.com/index.php?r=product/configure&model=P670HS-G) would work very well with DS, and you can configure as needed. I've got a Prostar that is over 2 years old with a 970M, and have used it a lot with DS, Carrara, and other 3D software.

If you are looking for a more budget friendly laptop, this (http://www.pro-star.com/index.php?r=product/configure&model=N870HP6) might fit the bill. Due to portability requirements, I've been rendering on laptops for years (all but one of the images in my gallery(s) have been done on a laptop). With the Prostar (which are customized/rebranded Clevo laptops, probably the biggest laptop manufacturer, they make many of the big brand name laptops) I've had no worries about heat issues while rendering either, they are very well designed and the cooling is excellent (though it can be a bit loud).

Ongoing Moment

You may want to wait until Ryzen is introduced for laptops. Should shave a few hundred dollars off the price that can go into a better gpu and more ram. Just my opinion of course. But AMD is really going for the jugular and undercutting Intel prices.

JamesJAB

Ongoing Moment said:

You may want to wait until Ryzen is introduced for laptops. Should shave a few hundred dollars off the price that can go into a better gpu and more ram. Just my opinion of course. But AMD is really going for the jugular and undercutting Intel prices.

The issue with going AMD on a laptop historicly ever since the A sereis CPUs came out, you can not get them with Nvivia GPUs.
This trend will probably continue with the mobile Ryzen chips.

glennblackphotos

What spec graphics card has yours got Dustrider? 

DustRider said:

Something like this (http://www.pro-star.com/index.php?r=product/configure&model=P670HS-G) would work very well with DS, and you can configure as needed. I've got a Prostar that is over 2 years old with a 970M, and have used it a lot with DS, Carrara, and other 3D software.

If you are looking for a more budget friendly laptop, this (http://www.pro-star.com/index.php?r=product/configure&model=N870HP6) might fit the bill. Due to portability requirements, I've been rendering on laptops for years (all but one of the images in my gallery(s) have been done on a laptop). With the Prostar (which are customized/rebranded Clevo laptops, probably the biggest laptop manufacturer, they make many of the big brand name laptops) I've had no worries about heat issues while rendering either, they are very well designed and the cooling is excellent (though it can be a bit loud).

Edited to fix quote

DrNewcenstein

Another thing you can look into is the Akitio external GPU box, which is large enough to hold a full-length, double-width GTX-based Nvidia card (Titan Xp, 1080TI, that sorta thing). It might be less expensive to get an older Akitio Thunderbox, which Mac users have used for some time to run external GPU setups, but the problem there is the box case is very short, and won't hold a full-length card. You can take the board out of the case, but on a boat, that might be even more dangerous than in a house trailer lol

Anyway, the Akitio e-GPU box runs off Thunderbolt 3, so if you do get a new laptop, and it's a Mac, make sure it's got Thunderbolt 3. As I understand it, Thunderbolt 3 devices will not work on Thunderbolt 2 machines.

Also, I do believe you can daisy chain up to 6 devices, but I'm not sure if that includes external GPUs (probably not).

You might also trade in the boat for an apartment so you can get a real desktop with at least 2 GTX cards. Or add another generator. Maybe solar or wind. Or water?