Thinking of replacing my laptop
rnollman
Posts: 310
I only use my laptop when I go on trips. My desktop is somewhat powerful and pretty much is ok for DAZ Renders. My laptop is very old with 6gb of memory and a 256 mb internal drive and a Pentium processor. I am thinking of getting a refurbished laptop from bestbuy:
Lenovo - ThinkPad T460 14" Refurbished Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 16GB Memory - 256GB Solid State Drive - Black
Would this have sufficient RAM and disk drive space to run DAZ?
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Comments
Laptops are the worst type of computer to use for anything like rendering.
In all honesty, a 16GB quad core i5 will be painfully slow if it even runs at all.
The integrated graphics use shared memory, so It won't be of much value for gaming and no value for rendering at all.
That laptop would be more at home as a business/education tool to save notes, exchange data, looking up reports/data during meetings and things of that nature.
If it's a laptop you want for doing resource intensive tasks, you should look for one that at least has an Nvidia GPU installed, preferable an RTX card as Nvidia has been dropping support for non-RTX cards and the writing is on the wall for those older cards.
Incredients for a DS computer = "There is no such thing as enough RAM, VRAM or storage space"
Starting at 32GB RAM, 12GB VRAM (on Nvidia RTX GPU) and an external USB 4TB HD for the content, 500GB-1TB C-drive is enough for the OS and programs.
It has an HD Intel Graphics 520.
You people are a very tough crowd. I may reconsider repacing my laptop as I suspected from your comments that an average business oriented laptop just is not up to the task. Laptops that would be useful would in the $3000 to $5000 range in out of my price range. Back to reality...
Not tough, realistic.
Too many threads about DS not working as advertised/expected with lesser systems.
Replacing that ancient laptop sounds like a good idea, if you need a general purpose laptop for travel (read email, surf the net, look at your photos, etc.). But for Daz Studio Iray rendering, as people have said, to proposed replacement is not up to the job. An HD Intel Graphics 520 will not help for Iray rendering, either. It is best to realize the limitations before you waste money. People here are trying to help prevent disappointment.
Actualy my laptop is not even up to the task of Photoshop as some of the features require a more advanced processor. The Filter > Style > Oil Paint effect does not work because my graphics processor is so old.
I used a refurbished Surface Pro 5 to play with DS while I was at work, and it worked well enough for under $1000. Obviously it wasn't a rendering beast, but it was perfectly usable, and if nothing else, I could set up scenes on that, then render them when I got home.
If you really want a laptop for daz, look at gaming laptops. "Business laptops" will not have enough RAM or graphics processing power. Gaming laptops are however, going to be more expensive.
When my old laptop gave up on me, I replaced it with an iPad. That's lightweight and fine for browsing, keeping in touch with the family, running Netflix, watching Youtube etc. Much better for travel than a laptop. It would be wonderful if there was an IRay-capable laptop but if there is, I can't afford it.
Seconded. Consider joining Sam's Club or Costco - they have periodic sales. Case in point - my Lenovo Y70 was dying last year and I'd already replaced the MB, the hard drive, and the battery (three times). Costco had an MSI laptop for $1400 and the closest match I could find on MSI's web site listed at $1700. The Costco version had a 512 GB ssd and a 1 TB sata drive; the MSI had a 1 TB ssd as the only storage. The rest of the specs matched.
And then Costco put it on sale for $1100. So I now have an MSI GE75 Raider, 16 GB, with a GTX 2070 8 GB. The downsides - this puppy is heavy, the battery life is a hair over 3 hours, and the power brick is also heavy. But it does what I need at a price I considered acceptable. My main system is an ATX tower case with a 980 ti, 1080 ti, and 3060; at this point the 980 ti just drives the monitors. I use the laptop for portability and test renders while following tutorials; it's also my web-surfing system
$1400 is too much for me to spend, as I hardly ever use my laptop. I will stick with using my desktop system and just use the laptop on trips to connect to the internet. I would like to use Photoshop on the laptop. Some of the key features do not work in Photoshop because my laptop is so old.