WHAT IS A GOOD LAPTOP FOR RENDERING ?

I been thinking of buying a new laptop and i want something fast. i wanna be able to do complex scenes with details but i want the rendering time to not be super slow. I have no idea what i am suppose to look for in a laptop to get the best for rendering. I been thinking of getting this:(is it a good option?) please help... Razer Blade 15 Base Edition - QHD 165Hz - GeForce RTX 3070 - Black. Product Code: RZ09-0369BEA2-R3U1

Comments

  • ps2000ps2000 Posts: 278

    Best for rendering on a laptop would be a rtx 3080 with 16gb ram. Such laptops will be released in February.

    Your rtx 3070 has only 8gb of ram and would reach it's limit if you try to render bigger scenes. 

  • mwasielewski1990mwasielewski1990 Posts: 343
    edited January 2021

    ps2000 said:

    Best for rendering on a laptop would be a rtx 3080 with 16gb ram. Such laptops will be released in February.

    Your rtx 3070 has only 8gb of ram and would reach it's limit if you try to render bigger scenes. 

    Seconded. If you can, wait for the 16GB version. If you can afford a 3070 at all, these couple bucks more won't hurt you. Be advised, mobile 30xx gpu chips are much much weaker than normal desktop ones.

    Besides... I'm not sure if Razer would be your best bet. I have their keyboard and mouse, they were not cheap, and they broke very quickly during normal use. Razer's quality control is not at it's best right now.

    Generally, look for something with a decent CPU so you can also play modern games, the aforementioned 16GB version of rtx 3080 + a good quality display with decent out-of-the-box color calibration.

    Post edited by mwasielewski1990 on
  • onixonix Posts: 282

    There is no laptop for rendering   any attempt to match laptop rendering performance with PC performance will make it get on fire or explode because rendering requires over 250W of power just for a single GPU

    But yes if laptop has an Nvidia GPU with at least 8gb memory it will work somewhat

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited January 2021

    onix said:

    There is no laptop for rendering   any attempt to match laptop rendering performance with PC performance will make it get on fire or explode because rendering requires over 250W of power just for a single GPU

    But yes if laptop has an Nvidia GPU with at least 8gb memory it will work somewhat

    My laptop works fine 24/7 as did my old one which I retired because this one has a 2060 RTX card the old one was CPU only :) Yes they get hot that is why I also have a Laptop Cooling Tray :) https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3107663?clickSR=slp:term:laptop cooling tray:1:8:1 

    Post edited by Fishtales on
  • Unfortunately I can't afford a desktop. So what really matters overall? The gpu more or the ram? Is having a 3070 8gb not stronger than let's say a 2080 super 16gb? I'm just trying to understand before I buy a laptop. I'm really confused about what I should buy that would make fast rendering for semi complex scenes and make my gaming experience for games like call of duty good.

    thank you all for helping!

  • ps2000ps2000 Posts: 278

    Most important is a fast gpu with enough ram (im mean gpu ram in this case). If your scene is too big, for example 9gb, and you only have a 8gb card, the gpu won't render the scene and fall back on the cpu.

    The other components aren't so important if you render with your gpu with iray. An older mid-range cpu with 16gb ram is totally fine. 

    Why don't you have money for a desktop pc? A laptop with a rtx 3070 is certainly a lot more expensive than a desktop pc with a decent gpu. 

    Maybe you have an old rig still laying around? Adding a used 1080 ti would make it to a fine rendering machine for daz-studio (better than a laptop with a rtx 3070 which only has 8gb ram compared to the 1080 tis 11gb).

  • onixonix Posts: 282
    edited January 2021

    devin.g13 said:

    Unfortunately I can't afford a desktop. So what really matters overall? The gpu more or the ram? Is having a 3070 8gb not stronger than let's say a 2080 super 16gb? I'm just trying to understand before I buy a laptop. I'm really confused about what I should buy that would make fast rendering for semi complex scenes and make my gaming experience for games like call of duty good.

    thank you all for helping!

     

    There is no logic in that. desktop pc is less expensive than a laptop and you can even buy used. the laptop is only a good idea if you are short on space or you need to move it around a lot.

    It is not even because of computing power but because you probably want a pretty huge monitor or monitors for more comfort. and also I noticed that desktops and laptops with the same specs have very considerable performance diffrence

    I don't know if laptops are manufactured with GPU that had more than 8gb of GPU memory  But generally, GPU memory is more important than anything else because if your GPU is weak it will still do the job of it has not enough ram even by single-byte it will refuse to work entirely with that scene unless you optimize it somehow. 

    As I know "super" cards are all limited to 8gb which is somewhat enough (but just barely.) 16 GB system ram Is also just marginally enough  If you have SSD it will be somewhat ok but you may have trouble browsing the web while rendering is taking place.

    also considering coming ant power demands for the laptop you can't expect any reasonable GPU performance anyway, you can expect it just to work at some minimal performance which will be mostly limited by power consumption and cooling so there is no reason to buy something super powerful.

    Post edited by onix on
  • onixonix Posts: 282

    Fishtales said:

    onix said:

    There is no laptop for rendering   any attempt to match laptop rendering performance with PC performance will make it get on fire or explode because rendering requires over 250W of power just for a single GPU

    But yes if laptop has an Nvidia GPU with at least 8gb memory it will work somewhat

    My laptop works fine 24/7 as did my old one which I retired because this one has a 2060 RTX card the old one was CPU only :) Yes they get hot that is why I also have a Laptop Cooling Tray :) https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3107663?clickSR=slp:term:laptop cooling tray:1:8:1 

     

    Does that mean that you need 24/7 to render one image on that laptop LOL  especially the one with CPU only 

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119

    onix said:

    Fishtales said:

    onix said:

    There is no laptop for rendering   any attempt to match laptop rendering performance with PC performance will make it get on fire or explode because rendering requires over 250W of power just for a single GPU

    But yes if laptop has an Nvidia GPU with at least 8gb memory it will work somewhat

    My laptop works fine 24/7 as did my old one which I retired because this one has a 2060 RTX card the old one was CPU only :) Yes they get hot that is why I also have a Laptop Cooling Tray :) https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3107663?clickSR=slp:term:laptop cooling tray:1:8:1 

     

    Does that mean that you need 24/7 to render one image on that laptop LOL  especially the one with CPU only 

     As you seem to know so much about my render times I'll leave you to work that out.

    (All render times for each of my renders are in my Art Studio thread)

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,754

    devin.g13 said:

    Unfortunately I can't afford a desktop.

    For what you would spend on a laptop that can handle renders in DS, you can get as good if not better desktop,  so that makes no sense.

  • Wow thanks y'all! I feel like I have a better understanding of it all. I meant I can't afford the desktop because I'm a student so I need something portable. As much as I want a desktop I only have money for one choice and it needs to be a laptop for my school and of course gaming xD 

    maybe in the future I'll get my desktop<3

     

    also, I'm a bit confused about a comment @onix

    are you saying that getting something powerful would be useless because the limits would prevent it from working at its full capacity ?

  • MimicMollyMimicMolly Posts: 2,193
    edited January 2021

    I use a laptop because I don't really have much space for a desktop at home, long story. It's not a new laptop either, but I can render simple portraits of characters with it. Anything with a big set or terrible dark...I mean "dramatic" lighting wouldn't be doable with a laptop.

    I'm sure any new laptop would be fine. You just need to be mindful of the assets you're going to render. Lots of morphs make the figure load longer. The new Genesis 8.1 loads longer because it's at a higher resolution (same can be said about HD models sold here). Excessive amounts of texture maps in models will make rendering very slow. (But that's just poor UV layouts, which is the PA's fault.) How much memory you have left in your laptop, may cause slower render times too. (It's why a lot of people store content to external drives. Not just because they've been doing DS/Poser for 10+ years.)

    I'm just saying, that it can be done. But you can't really be ambitious about it. We're not all retired professionals with extra cash to spend for this.

    Post edited by MimicMolly on
  • ps2000ps2000 Posts: 278
    edited January 2021

    devin.g13 said:

    Wow thanks y'all! I feel like I have a better understanding of it all. I meant I can't afford the desktop because I'm a student so I need something portable. As much as I want a desktop I only have money for one choice and it needs to be a laptop for my school and of course gaming xD 

    maybe in the future I'll get my desktop<3

     

    also, I'm a bit confused about a comment @onix

    are you saying that getting something powerful would be useless because the limits would prevent it from working at its full capacity ?

    A laptop with a RTX 3080 gpu with 16gb ram will render just fine but not as fast as a desktop RTX 3080 because the laptop RTX is less powerful i.e. has fewer cuda-cores. That is because it's technical not feasible to integrate a desktop RTX 3080 or RTX 3070 into a laptop. It would propably get too hot, is too big etc. Even the downgraded laptop gpus develop a lot of heat. Rendering will put quite a strain on the gpu i.e. it gets pretty hot.

    So you should look for a gaming laptop with a good cooling solution (read reviews etc.). And I would also buy a good cooling pad to lenghten the live expectancy of your laptop.

    Post edited by ps2000 on
  • onixonix Posts: 282

    devin.g13 said:

    Wow thanks y'all! I feel like I have a better understanding of it all. I meant I can't afford the desktop because I'm a student so I need something portable. As much as I want a desktop I only have money for one choice and it needs to be a laptop for my school and of course gaming xD 

    maybe in the future I'll get my desktop<3

     

    also, I'm a bit confused about a comment @onix

    are you saying that getting something powerful would be useless because the limits would prevent it from working at its full capacity ?

     

    there is no big deal to put desktop-level hardware into a laptop and some manufacturers actually do that but when you try to run that hardware at full power it will overheat and start to throttle itself. another problem can happen because of power supply limitations  There are laptops that have a desktop level of performance but they are pretty huge and their power supply is the size of the brick.

    here is video about that

     

     

     

  • KenYanoKenYano Posts: 106

    I'm a MAC user who just preordered the MSI GP66 https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GP66-Leopard-10UX with the 3070 card. I know that desktops are more powerfull but now what I read in this thread is that sub 300 watts power is no good. Don't mean to hijack this thread but could some one chime in and let me know if this laptop is good enough for Iray animation? I don't have my scenes too full.

  • coralyncoralyn Posts: 47

    I would defininately invest in a good 'laptop deck/cooler'. I mean, folks rant about FPS in games, but 'games' don't peg a CPU/GPU at 100% for 10+ minutes the way a 3D render can. They tend to peg CPU/GPU for a dozen seconds here, a dozen there. Sustained heat build-up in any compact dense tablet/phonish thing will lead to shorter life. I myself prefer a desktop for rendering, but if a laptop is the best answer, make sure you pay a little more to gain some extra air-flow (for sure, don't get a laptop which lacks fans, which will be advertised as super 'quiet' or something. :-)

     

  • Heh. I don't know how much any of this holds true anymore. nVidia RTX 30's in Canada, on New Egg, are at a base price of $1000 and above. They now cost probably well above what you would pay for all of the other components to put a new computer together. And that, is insane. Even the RTX 20's that are just under $1000 it's still the same thing. Well above the cost of the other PC parts.

    A gaming laptop might not be a bad solution for the forseeable future.

    Whatever nvidia GPU anyone has had for the past several years (or even more) that couldn't take the leap and then now the prices have become so extreme those are now gold in their longevity. The GTX 10's and 20's appear to still be high.

  • Roman_K2Roman_K2 Posts: 1,239

    MimicMolly said:

    I use a laptop because I don't really have much space for a desktop at home, long story. It's not a new laptop either, but I can render simple portraits of characters with it.

    Sure, lots of things you can do with a laptop. I'd repeat the comment about a cooling tray though, eg. you want a stand that helps to move air underneath the computer, I usually have a couple of extra fans going on the side as well. Full disclosure: yes that is a Commodore 1702 monitor that's propping up one of the fans! Great for graphics... I mean watching VHS tapes. laugh

    extra-fans.jpg
    1024 x 1741 - 240K
  • ps2000 said:

    devin.g13 said:

    Wow thanks y'all! I feel like I have a better understanding of it all. I meant I can't afford the desktop because I'm a student so I need something portable. As much as I want a desktop I only have money for one choice and it needs to be a laptop for my school and of course gaming xD 

    maybe in the future I'll get my desktop<3

     

    also, I'm a bit confused about a comment @onix

    are you saying that getting something powerful would be useless because the limits would prevent it from working at its full capacity ?

    A laptop with a RTX 3080 gpu with 16gb ram will render just fine but not as fast as a desktop RTX 3080 because the laptop RTX is less powerful i.e. has fewer cuda-cores. That is because it's technical not feasible to integrate a desktop RTX 3080 or RTX 3070 into a laptop. It would propably get too hot, is too big etc. Even the downgraded laptop gpus develop a lot of heat. Rendering will put quite a strain on the gpu i.e. it gets pretty hot.

    So you should look for a gaming laptop with a good cooling solution (read reviews etc.). And I would also buy a good cooling pad to lenghten the live expectancy of your laptop.

    It is doable, but the solution would be to pay 6x(or more) the price you would pay for a high end gaming laptop, and you would be hauling around the equivalent of a small(relatively speaking) 15kg+ suitcase around. The whole design would have to be centered around the graphics card since it would be the largest component and needs to be spaced enough for proper air cooling. So its doable, but would be a highly customized build, and limited to corporate wallets or the extremely rich. The amount of airflow needed for such a build would make an Alienware laptop running at full blast sound whisper quiet in comparison... To be honest, I wouldn't even bother with a battery since it would be more of a "mobile desktop" and a battery would only add more unecessary weight.

    Surprisingly, Acer made a monster of a laptop a few years back that had two GTX 1080s in SLI which cost around $10,000. Not sure how good it sold, but it doesn't look like anyone else tried to make a similar laptop lately.

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