Yes Yes I know Laptop question AGAIN!! GREG!!

[GregHess]

I don't do laptops.

:)

[iC4]

I think it's pretty nice, nice resolution and for a laptop the graphiccard is top!

and I think compared to the ti4600 the fx5600 will perform sometimes better sometimes not.

[Vandal]

Laptops will give you great resolutions, as long as you have a UXGA screen.. only problem is that try running Maya at 1600x1200 on a mobile video card. Ahah.. have fun, it won't work properly.

On my old school laptop, I'd have to scale down to 800x600 to get anything close to workable performance.

[dondo]

Hithere.

(IMHO)
-Video cards for laptops don't give decent 3d support... consider that running a (any) 3d-app on laptops.
-Laptop systems are hardly upgradable... Practically you can throw it out the window once you upgraded the software (which consume more-and-more resources with newer versions)
-Laptops are far more expensive and hardly mobile since most battery packs last for only about 4 hours... Some run for even less time, as some manufacturers design their laptops with stuff that was designed for desktop computers - and guess what: they consume more power.

I hope I was not too disapointing...

[PixelVampire]

http://www.dell.com/us/en/gen/topics/segtopic_precisionm60.htm

[mixolydian]

I had to get a laptop for running Maya, Houdini, and Derivative's Touch Designer... ended up getting the HP/Compaq Evo N800w, and have to say I am consistenly impressed with it. Personally I think it is better than either the M60/M70 or the Toshibas. It has an ATI FireGL mobility 9000, and runs large Maya files better than any other laptop I've tried. It doesn't have a native firewire, only USB 2, which was ok for me, I just got the adaptec firewire pcmcia, which works perfectly. The wireless card attaches to the back of the lcd area, which is actually nice, freeing up space for pcmcia cards. The chassis is ultra thin for how much hardware is contained, yet doesn't run overly hot in my opinion. The housing around the UXGA lcd is magnesium as well, so it is very resistant to bumps, etc. Overall it has a great feel to it and is a pleasure to work with. I like both of the other machines (Dell, Toshiba), but the n800w is just that much better IMHO.

Fully decked out with a P4 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM, FireGL9000, 60GB HD, wireless lan card, cost me around $3600. I ordered online and had it within 2 days as well.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-64295-89315-212727-f26-96322.html

[PixelVampire]

mixolydian - Thanks for the mail. I have a friend who works for Toshiba. As a result I will get it considerably cheaper than normal. If I decide to get it.

**The Toshiba will be enough for modelling don't you think? It won't replace my desktop. I just need it because I am on the road a lot.

[Signal2Noise]

You can't go wrong with the Toshiba. For the money (and in your fortunate case, especially for the money!) they are excellent machines.

I have an older Toshiba (PIII 733MHz) and a newer Dell i8200. I do almost all my modeling, animation, and prerenders on those and then farm the files back to my desktop for final rendering and output.

[CgFX]

Wow. I think you are the only person on the planet that thinks ATI's mobile FireGL products are better than the mobile Quadro stuff.

The Quadro in the Dell M50/M60 kicks the living snot out of the ATI parts in the HP and IBM mobiles which can be seen view SPECviewperf and SPECapc.

[PixelVampire]

CGFX I agree that the firegl is not as good as the quadro.

Do you think the the Nvidia5600fx though inferior to the quadro will be good enough for basic Maya modeling (intermediate level) ?????

[CgFX]

I would say that with light Maya work you should be okay.

There is no question that Quadro buys you a ton with Pro apps such as Maya. Not just features and performance but supportability and QA.

[mixolydian]

I have machines with both Quadros and FireGL's in them, and like them both. At the time (three months ago) I helped on some demos for ati and nvidia, and this laptop just stuck out of the crowd since it ended up tackling both nvidia shading tasks and ati shading tasks, where the 440 were failing on some aspects of the ati shading language tasks. The performance we were seeing from this machine was good, so I tested out all of my Maya and Houdini stuff on it, and it flew, so I decided to get it and haven't been disappointed yet. This was before the release of the QuadroFX go700, so it doesn't really compare to the latest nvidia mobile out now as far as pure power, but it's openGL implementation is full and hasn't failed on anything for realtime stuff, which is why I got it. You will see about a 1.8x increase in speed for the quadro700 over the mobility9000. Also on the spec tests I haven't seen any results for the evo n800w as compared to the m50, has anyone seen this? We ran viewperf7.1 and at the time this machine was really smoking on the tests, especially 3dsmax, drv09, dx08, and lightscape.

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