OT - Laptops and Cinema 4D

[pixelchemist]

your probably going to want a little more horsepower than that... it needs 1GB of ram at a minimum and at least go for ati radeon mobility or nvidia geforce go lines of video cards

the processor is actually fine but the rest of the machine most likley isnt up to it...

also you probably are going to want to go 15 or 17 inch for the screen with a decent resolution and good color reproduction.

i run cinema on my Sager 9890-V Pentium4 3.4 800 FSB/1GB DDR2/Geforce Go 7800GTX/17" 1920x1200 WUXGA screen and its works flawlessly and fast... but i am running a pretty decked out machine and pay for that in (a lot of) weight and nearly non-existant battery life (50min-90min depending what i am doing and how hard the machine is working)

anyways i suggest you look at maybe a dell inpiron 9300 or maybe a even a inspiron 6000 if you want cinema on the go for a small(ish) budget

[LucentDreams]

agree on the graphics card, you dont' wanna use intel shared graphics on a laptop for 3D.

as for the memory, well that does depend on what your doing? I have trouble rememebring what ti was like with less then a gig but I'd hate to go back. you can run cinema with 512 safely though as long as renders aren't too large and your not doing things with millions of textures and polygons.

[Olga_Davydova]

I bought LG LW40 a couple of months ago. It works beautifully with C4D and does very good quick renders.

Specifications:

Intel Pentium M 1.73
RAM 512
Wide screen (movie theater format)
ATI Mobility Radeon X 600 Graphics Card

[LucentDreams]

hi olga coudl you post a cinebench score of the graphics card? I'm looking at a tablet PC with the same card and woudl love to know how it fares.

[moka.studio]

You need at least a Gig of Ram if you are going to do professional work with it. If you are doing some editing of large images in Photoshop, I would go with 2 Gigs, 1 Gig will be insuficient at time ( especially if yo have other apps running).


I bought 8 months ago a Fujitsu Siemens Laptop with an Athlon64 3700+, 1 Gig Ram, 9700 Radeon Graphic Card, 15'' screen.

It got 337 CB score for rendering, and 3178 for OpenGL, so it is comparable with some quite good workstation ( well, single processor ones). So I have a fairly fast machine to take with me if I am working away from the studio, especially Display-wise.
The only drawback is that I cannot add more Ram, it is lmited to 1Gig.
So check to make sure you have the possiblity to upgrade, even if you don't put in 2 gigs at first.

The normal processor gives you less work time if you are working with a battery, but honestly, I have almost always used it with the power supply so far ( I think there are almost no laptops without Mobility processors of one form or antoher now though).

I also checked some laptops recently, and at least here the prices for the 17'' ones have gone down considerably. If you are going to do a lot of work on it, it might be a good thing.

[ThePriest]

Basically I won't get much for under $1000 then, ugh.
I have a beastly workstation, but could use something while on vacation in the coming weeks.
Thanks for your suggestions though.

[moka.studio]

yes well,
if it not your primary machine, the it should be ok.
Just make sure you get, as others posted aboev a decent VGA card, it
does not have to be the latest and biggest, but something like a 6--- series from Nvidia of a Radeon.
And there are a few laptops out there, even decently priced ones, that come with a GIg of ram.

Oh and have a good look a the Charger before you buy; I didn't and mine weighs almost as much as the Laptop itself (...)

[imashination]

It does depend a lot on what youre doing. For example I do all my on-site training on a 1.6 pentium-M with geforce 4mx gfc card and 256 megs of ram. I dont have high demands for training though. If you just want to use it for fairly simple stuff then its fine, but for anything approaching a full final project it might annoy you a bit.

[duderender]

To give you an idea, on a 32bit XP Cinema I can squeak out a render with 7.some million polygons with 2GB RAM. While it is not totally linear you can gauge it a bit as to what c4d's capactiy is with 1GB or 512MB.

It was a squeeze, even Sniper wouldn't work.

[Per-Anders]

you should be able to squeeze out a bit more if you choose "Raytracer" mode in the hair render effect and set the Tracing Memory to low.

[duderender]

you should be able to squeeze out a bit more if you choose "Raytracer" mode in the hair render effect and set the Tracing Memory to low.

Sorry? I don't see what you're referring to? I was commenting on a scanned model I rendered: http://www.jase.ca/content/forumpost/finalrender/stanford_dragon_01.jpg

[MJV]

I've been researching laptops lately but it seems like there is nowhere a good balance between size, portability and suitability for even light graphics work. Anyone found a good 15 inch portable with good battery life and a decent graphics card?

[pixelchemist]

i guess im somewhat of a sager fan boy but the sager 5720 is a great centrino laptop as well the sony A series and the Acer Ferrari series

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.