Getting a laptop - what is ideal for running Daz

Johnny Rico

Hi,

I'm looking to get a new laptop (PC) that will be more ideal for running DAZ renders than my current computer. Does anyone have suggestions on what to look for?

JimmyC_2009

At the bottom of this page, there is a list of requirements for DAZ Studio for both 32 bit and 64 bit versions, that may help you
http://www.daz3d.com/get_studio

For the viewport in DS, OpenGL is used, and version 1.6 is the minimum required at the moment. You need some kind of Graphics card I think, rather than the built in Intel graphics chip.

For rendering in 3Delight (DS) the more cores you have the better, as 3Delight only uses the CPU. As much RAM as you can afford is another plus for running DS and rendering.

I don't use a laptop, so I can't recommend a specific model, someone else may be able to help more.

Toyen

I have a Lenovo laptop with two Graphic cards, i7 core and 16GB RAM. It works for me well : )

Johnny Rico

Thank you for the help.
Couple more questions:

1. Would a gaming laptop be more ideal for faster renders?

2. It sounds like 3Delight does not use the graphics card so is your video card somewhat irrelevant using this render option?

3. What about if using reality and lux render. Does the video card become more important?

JimmyC_2009

rusty9073 said:

Thank you for the help.
Couple more questions:

1. Would a gaming laptop be more ideal for faster renders?

2. It sounds like 3Delight does not use the graphics card so is your video card somewhat irrelevant using this render option?

3. What about if using reality and lux render. Does the video card become more important?

2. 3Delight does not use the Graphics card at all, it is true, but the graphics card/chip is needed for the viewport to set up the scene in the first place. There can be a great deal of lag if the graphic performance is low.

3. Luxrender has a 'hybrid' version at the moment I believe, and it can use a combination of the CPU and GPU, but there is not a massive difference in rendering speed. Luxrender is generally a good deal slower in my experience, since it is a completely different kind of render engine to 3Delight.

I believe that the makers of Luxrender are working on a new version which may only use the GPU, but you might need to go to the Luxrender forums to find out more about that.

SpottedKitty

JimmyC_2009 said:

I believe that the makers of Luxrender are working on a new version which may only use the GPU, but you might need to go to the Luxrender forums to find out more about that.

A couple of months ago someone on one of the Luxus threads said the new version was to get the hybrid mode to work properly; right now it does sometimes work (and I've seen it frequently give a pretty good speed improvement) but it's prone to catastrophic crashes. It isn't a GPU-only update.

Johnny Rico

Thank you for this info. It will help as I look at Laptop deals this week :)

One other question:

Does the amount of RAM make a significant different in speed of render with either rendering engines?

RoLoW

Regarding RAM, the impact on rendering will depend greatly on the engineering design of the laptop's circuitry (ie shared Video memory architecture, or separate video memory).

However, in my experience laptops are usually designed with a maximum amount of memory and may not even be expandable. If you can budget it, try to get a laptop with at least 4Gb if you are running a 32-bit O/S and at least 8Gb if you are running a 64-bit O/S. (Unfortunately it usually turns out that the more memory the better).