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Is is good to use a laptop?

cjrosdat4cjrosdat4 Posts: 20
in New Users
I have been using my laptop for all of my rendering. I use an HP laptop. Would it be better to use a desktop? Or is it alright to use a laptop for these renders?

Comments

  • AscaniaAscania Posts: 1,849

    Are you happy with its performance? Then it is alright.

  • CdpiersonCdpierson Posts: 71

    I've been making renders for over 4 years, and all I've used is a laptop.  A desktop is more customizable, and in most cases, more powerful, but it depends on what you want to do with your renders.  I just do it as a hobby and for fun, so I don't really need a powerful setup.  As Ascania said, if you're happy with the results you're getting, it's fine.

  • ChezjuanChezjuan Posts: 515

    If you're using Iray, a desktop with a decent discrete NVidia GPU like a GeForce 1070 or 1080 would be faster for rendering since most laptops don't have the VRAM for rendering larger scenes and it falls back to CPU. It might also be faster for 3Delight since desktop processors tend to have more cores and be able to be clocked faster.

    But that said, and as others have noted, if you're happy with what you are using, that's OK too.

  • cjrosdat4cjrosdat4 Posts: 20

    Thank you for your advice and opinion on this. I've been able to make renders just fine sometimes. But other times my laptop freezes up and does not let me type or move my cursor. In some cases, my screen has turned black and I cannot recover the display. So then I have to turn off my laptop manually, which is probably bad for my laptop and the software. It only happens when the rendering canvas is really large. How do I adjust the canvas dimensions so it is not so large? I usually thought to pick the 4:3 or 5:4 defaults or I just render the size of the viewport. Which settings allow for the web. You know... 72 dpi instead of 300 dpi. I am guessing that is how this is set, more for print than the web. If I am wrong, please correct me, but the sizes of the canvases make it harder to process when it is large.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548
    Chezjuan said:

    If you're using Iray, a desktop with a decent discrete NVidia GPU like a GeForce 1070 or 1080 would be faster for rendering since most laptops don't have the VRAM for rendering larger scenes and it falls back to CPU. It might also be faster for 3Delight since desktop processors tend to have more cores and be able to be clocked faster.

    But that said, and as others have noted, if you're happy with what you are using, that's OK too.I

    I use a laptop with NVidia GeForce 1060 and it works very well, for some rather complex scenes.  And it actaully works better for Dforce than my desktop does. So if its working, then by all means, keep using it.

  • Peter WadePeter Wade Posts: 1,623

    I started with a laptop but went to a desktop about 5 or 6 years ago. I found the desktop was a big improvement but I did buy a high performance desktop at the time. Since then it's had a new graphics card but the rest of it is unchanged and it still performs well. 

    Modern laptops are a lot better than they were 5 or 6 years ago so the difference might not be as great now.

    I have had a few freezes and lockups in rendering on my desktop. I think Iray can lockup almost anything if you give a really complex scene to render.

    To change your render size go to Render Settings, General tab and click on the dropdown under Dimension Preset at the top. If you select Custom you can use the pixel size boxes to select any size you want. If you keep Contstrain Proportions on it will adjust the dimenions to keep the aspect ratio the same when you change width or height.

  • cjrosdat4cjrosdat4 Posts: 20

    Thank you everyone for the information! Also thank you Peter Wade for the tip and tricks!

  • odasteinodastein Posts: 606
    Chezjuan said:

    If you're using Iray, a desktop with a decent discrete NVidia GPU like a GeForce 1070 or 1080 would be faster for rendering since most laptops don't have the VRAM for rendering larger scenes and it falls back to CPU. It might also be faster for 3Delight since desktop processors tend to have more cores and be able to be clocked faster.

    But that said, and as others have noted, if you're happy with what you are using, that's OK too.

    Hmm...Does only the VRAM matters? Because I'm using a laptop with 8 Go RAM and I intended to buy more RAM (32 Go maybe) specifically to accelerate renders. Does it mean that adding RAM wouldn't change anything (especially since I set DAZ 3D to not use the CPU)?

  • ChezjuanChezjuan Posts: 515
    odastein said:
    Chezjuan said:

    If you're using Iray, a desktop with a decent discrete NVidia GPU like a GeForce 1070 or 1080 would be faster for rendering since most laptops don't have the VRAM for rendering larger scenes and it falls back to CPU. It might also be faster for 3Delight since desktop processors tend to have more cores and be able to be clocked faster.

    But that said, and as others have noted, if you're happy with what you are using, that's OK too.

    Hmm...Does only the VRAM matters? Because I'm using a laptop with 8 Go RAM and I intended to buy more RAM (32 Go maybe) specifically to accelerate renders. Does it mean that adding RAM wouldn't change anything (especially since I set DAZ 3D to not use the CPU)?

    If you are rendering in Iray, then VRAM is what matters (provided you have a NVIDIA GPU). If the scene is too big for the VRAM, then DAZ will fall back to CPU no matter what your settings are. System RAM doesn't have any effect on Iray renders if you are using the GPU. If you are rendering via CPU, RAM may accelerate render speed if it allows you to avoid needing to use virtual memory (which uses the disk as RAM), but if you are using the GPU, that won't matter. More RAM can help with stability and the ability to do other things while the system is rendering, though.

  • Peter WadePeter Wade Posts: 1,623
    odastein said:
    Chezjuan said:

    If you're using Iray, a desktop with a decent discrete NVidia GPU like a GeForce 1070 or 1080 would be faster for rendering since most laptops don't have the VRAM for rendering larger scenes and it falls back to CPU. It might also be faster for 3Delight since desktop processors tend to have more cores and be able to be clocked faster.

    But that said, and as others have noted, if you're happy with what you are using, that's OK too.

    Hmm...Does only the VRAM matters? Because I'm using a laptop with 8 Go RAM and I intended to buy more RAM (32 Go maybe) specifically to accelerate renders. Does it mean that adding RAM wouldn't change anything (especially since I set DAZ 3D to not use the CPU)?

    What Chezjuan says is true but I have heard claims that you should have either twice of three times as much system RAM as VRAM for efficient rendering. I don't know if this is true since I just happen to have three times as much system RAM as VRAM, not planned, it just turned outn that way.

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