Laptop suggestion for Daz work?

MuzMel

My current laptop has maybe 6 months of life left in it. It is a 2014 Macbook. DAZ Iray rendering is the most resource intensive task I do on my laptop, so with the new one I want to get something that is more suitable to the task. I am doing my own research as well but would like to get input from here, because you guys are much more experienced with this than I am. Currently it takes 15+ hours to render an indoor scene with 1 character... 

Havos

Check out this thread, where someone else asked a similar question.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/428551/mac-pro-vs-pc-gamer

Most people will argue that if you want to render Iray then you should not be buying another Mac.

MuzMel

Havos said:

Check out this thread, where someone else asked a similar question.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/428551/mac-pro-vs-pc-gamer

Most people will argue that if you want to render Iray then you should not be buying another Mac.

Oh I would not buy another Mac regardless of Daz. Was not a good experience. I'll take a look at the thread thank you. PC is also no go for me, I move around a lot. 

Wolfwood

Any laptop with nvidia 9xx+ will be a lot faster than the macbook as long as the scene fits in vRAM.

The better the gpu, faster iray will be, but maybe there are other considerations in your case. Are you ok with 15+ inch (considering macbook may be 13)? Is hard and too expensive to get decent a decent nvidia gpu in smaller than 15. Also, budget.

Also, new generation is almost here, so maybe waiting if you can would be a good option.

 

MuzMel

Wolfwood said:

Any laptop with nvidia 9xx+ will be a lot faster than the macbook as long as the scene fits in vRAM.

The better the gpu, faster iray will be, but maybe there are other considerations in your case. Are you ok with 15+ inch (considering macbook may be 13)? Is hard and too expensive to get decent a decent nvidia gpu in smaller than 15. Also, budget.

Also, new generation is almost here, so maybe waiting if you can would be a good option.

 

Thank you for the advice. 

 

i7-9750H 

RTX 2060 6 GB

16 GB RAM

512 GB SSD

Is what I am currently looking at. My budget is 1000usd and below. My current laptop is also 16gb ram and I have been able to render 8 characters on it somehow so I don't think it will be an issue. I am not too clear on VRAM, I am still researching it. People are saying with 6GB VRAM the GPU is useless as it will go to CPU rendering

Wolfwood

MuzMel said:

Wolfwood said:

Any laptop with nvidia 9xx+ will be a lot faster than the macbook as long as the scene fits in vRAM.

The better the gpu, faster iray will be, but maybe there are other considerations in your case. Are you ok with 15+ inch (considering macbook may be 13)? Is hard and too expensive to get decent a decent nvidia gpu in smaller than 15. Also, budget.

Also, new generation is almost here, so maybe waiting if you can would be a good option.

 

Thank you for the advice. 

 

i7-9750H 

RTX 2060 6 GB

16 GB RAM

512 GB SSD

Is what I am currently looking at. My budget is 1000usd and below. My current laptop is also 16gb ram and I have been able to render 8 characters on it somehow so I don't think it will be an issue. I am not too clear on VRAM, I am still researching it. People are saying with 6GB VRAM the GPU is useless as it will go to CPU rendering

I bought an MSI with those expects recently, except mine is only core i5. Was about to get the i7, but got a sudden price increase that put it out of my budget.

I have not tested much yet, but what i can say so far is that when it gets hot the fans are too noisy, ECO mode and disabling CPU in iray helps. I'm also looking to get a cooling pad of good quality to see if it helps.

About the 6gb, not usesless but not ideal either. You should expect to work with 2 or maybe 3 characters (+environment) before dumping to cpu. Using scene optimizer i expect to help a lot but have not tested yet. 8gb is usually a sweet spot, but i could not find any 2060 super or 2070 on budget. But i was limited to a couple of stores that worked for my courier. I also was in a hurry to buy because dollar exchange in my country is awfull and we are expeting a big devaluation soon. But if you can wait, i don't know if a 3xxx will be on budget but maybe the 2070 or similar goes down a little bit.

MuzMel

Wolfwood said:

MuzMel said:

Wolfwood said:

Any laptop with nvidia 9xx+ will be a lot faster than the macbook as long as the scene fits in vRAM.

The better the gpu, faster iray will be, but maybe there are other considerations in your case. Are you ok with 15+ inch (considering macbook may be 13)? Is hard and too expensive to get decent a decent nvidia gpu in smaller than 15. Also, budget.

Also, new generation is almost here, so maybe waiting if you can would be a good option.

 

Thank you for the advice. 

 

i7-9750H 

RTX 2060 6 GB

16 GB RAM

512 GB SSD

Is what I am currently looking at. My budget is 1000usd and below. My current laptop is also 16gb ram and I have been able to render 8 characters on it somehow so I don't think it will be an issue. I am not too clear on VRAM, I am still researching it. People are saying with 6GB VRAM the GPU is useless as it will go to CPU rendering

I bought an MSI with those expects recently, except mine is only core i5. Was about to get the i7, but got a sudden price increase that put it out of my budget.

I have not tested much yet, but what i can say so far is that when it gets hot the fans are too noisy, ECO mode and disabling CPU in iray helps. I'm also looking to get a cooling pad of good quality to see if it helps.

About the 6gb, not usesless but not ideal either. You should expect to work with 2 or maybe 3 characters (+environment) before dumping to cpu. Using scene optimizer i expect to help a lot but have not tested yet. 8gb is usually a sweet spot, but i could not find any 2060 super or 2070 on budget. But i was limited to a couple of stores that worked for my courier. I also was in a hurry to buy because dollar exchange in my country is awfull and we are expeting a big devaluation soon. But if you can wait, i don't know if a 3xxx will be on budget but maybe the 2070 or similar goes down a little bit.

I am in a similar situation with the dollar conversion haha. I can get a laptop with RTX2070 8GB but it is almost 400usd more. It puts it out of my budget, but I also don't want to be restricted to 2-3 characters, that is not much to work with. Hmmm

Wolfwood

MuzMel said:

Wolfwood said:

MuzMel said:

Wolfwood said:

Any laptop with nvidia 9xx+ will be a lot faster than the macbook as long as the scene fits in vRAM.

The better the gpu, faster iray will be, but maybe there are other considerations in your case. Are you ok with 15+ inch (considering macbook may be 13)? Is hard and too expensive to get decent a decent nvidia gpu in smaller than 15. Also, budget.

Also, new generation is almost here, so maybe waiting if you can would be a good option.

 

Thank you for the advice. 

 

i7-9750H 

RTX 2060 6 GB

16 GB RAM

512 GB SSD

Is what I am currently looking at. My budget is 1000usd and below. My current laptop is also 16gb ram and I have been able to render 8 characters on it somehow so I don't think it will be an issue. I am not too clear on VRAM, I am still researching it. People are saying with 6GB VRAM the GPU is useless as it will go to CPU rendering

I bought an MSI with those expects recently, except mine is only core i5. Was about to get the i7, but got a sudden price increase that put it out of my budget.

I have not tested much yet, but what i can say so far is that when it gets hot the fans are too noisy, ECO mode and disabling CPU in iray helps. I'm also looking to get a cooling pad of good quality to see if it helps.

About the 6gb, not usesless but not ideal either. You should expect to work with 2 or maybe 3 characters (+environment) before dumping to cpu. Using scene optimizer i expect to help a lot but have not tested yet. 8gb is usually a sweet spot, but i could not find any 2060 super or 2070 on budget. But i was limited to a couple of stores that worked for my courier. I also was in a hurry to buy because dollar exchange in my country is awfull and we are expeting a big devaluation soon. But if you can wait, i don't know if a 3xxx will be on budget but maybe the 2070 or similar goes down a little bit.

I am in a similar situation with the dollar conversion haha. I can get a laptop with RTX2070 8GB but it is almost 400usd more. It puts it out of my budget, but I also don't want to be restricted to 2-3 characters, that is not much to work with. Hmmm

8 gb i think will give you arround 4. But you will not be able to work with 8 out of the box. Scene optimizer can help a lot unless you need very high res (4k+) with several characters close ups.

If not enough, then to get as best(fast) as possible you will need high core count CPU to work with system ram. Here , from what i read of others, i think AMD is way better than intel in price/performance.

nicstt

AMD is better is both performance and price, and not just price/performance. The single core count is still marginally in Intel's favour but not anywhere near what it was

doubledeviant

This one's nice but runs about $2200:

MSI GE66 10SFS
15.6" 240 Hz screen
Intel Core i7
32GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
1TB SSD

Link (Best Buy website)

Might be worth considering a payment plan, or watching for a price dip or sale when the new cards hit the market. But someone more familiar with the current market for laptops might be able to point you to better balance between price and performance.

MuzMel

doubledeviant said:

This one's nice but runs about $2200:

 

MSI GE66 10SFS
15.6" 240 Hz screen
Intel Core i7
32GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
1TB SSD

 

Link (Best Buy website)

 

Might be worth considering a payment plan, or watching for a price dip or sale when the new cards hit the market. But someone more familiar with the current market for laptops might be able to point you to better balance between price and performance.

Thank you! The one I am looking at right now will run me $1300. It has RTX270 (not super) and 16GB RAM. What function does the RAM have in renders if I am not using the CPU for it?

nonesuch00

Since we know you want to DAZ and presuming you don't want to spend more than you spent on you MacBook I suggest getting an entry level gaming laptop with a nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 or 1660. You could get one in the nVidia 20XX series if you can afford it but be aware the nVidia GPU cards laptops almost always (or maybe always even) are not upgradable. 

I recently compared my newly received HP Pavilion Gaming 15 laptop with nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB RAM laptop rendering a FHD DAZ Scene with my AMD Rysen 7 2700 CPU with 32GB RAM desktop so it was a GPU render vs CPU render and the laptop was about 1/3 faster than the desktop on that render (that is it took 2 hours to render at FHD to 3000 iterations instead of the desktop's 3 hours to do the same render).

Personally, I love, love, love the Pavillion laptop's touch pad/mouse as it's like a good tablet in handling, I don't even need a USB or wireless mouse at all for that laptop and it wasn't like I even new all those tablet gestures I just guessed them using this Pavilion laptop & it was so well designed I knew right away that I wouldn't need an external mouse. So, based on that if you can afford a Pavilion laptop with an nVidia GeForce RTX 20XX series GPU with 8GB or more RAM that's what you want. Again though, no upgrading the GPU generally although you can the system RAM and SSD.

System RAM and SSD storage space in such a laptop will be upgradable later so skimp on those if you must and get a nVidia GeFore RTX 20XX laptop with 8GB or more video RAM.

outrider42

MuzMel said:

doubledeviant said:

This one's nice but runs about $2200:

 

MSI GE66 10SFS
15.6" 240 Hz screen
Intel Core i7
32GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
1TB SSD

 

Link (Best Buy website)

 

Might be worth considering a payment plan, or watching for a price dip or sale when the new cards hit the market. But someone more familiar with the current market for laptops might be able to point you to better balance between price and performance.

Thank you! The one I am looking at right now will run me $1300. It has RTX270 (not super) and 16GB RAM. What function does the RAM have in renders if I am not using the CPU for it?

Rule of thumb is you generally use twice as much RAM as you do VRAM. Like on my machine, I might have a scene using 6gb of VRAM, but my system RAM is over 12gb. So you still need RAM as well. But RAM is usually upgradable, VRAM in a laptop is not. And VRAM is an absolute max on your scenes that you will have to work around. So VRAM is very important. And if you do skimp on RAM with the intention of upgrading it later, you better double check to make sure it really is an option. Some laptops have low limits on how much RAM they can have.

shadowhawk1

Here is the laptop I just bought, and still waiting for it to get delivered. It has eeverything you are looking for plus. 

https://www.newegg.com/gray-asus-tuf-gaming-a15-fa506iv-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-000N-01S07?Item=9SIAFXNBGB4662