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capt-toenail
03-07-2010, 10:13 AM
Hi everyone!

I'm going to start VFX school soon and I need to buy a laptop - preferably i5 or i7. My budget is less than 1400 CAD. I know I should be buying a desktop but I can't.

I'm going to use 3ds Max, Maya, Nuke and Houdini. I was wondering if I should buy a laptop with a CUDA card or a Radeon... I read somewhere that ati's cards are more powerful for the same price, but CUDA helps if it's supported by the software. If ati cards are more powerful, should I wait for Stream compatible plugins to show up?

I just came across this - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+Pavilion+Laptop+with+Intel&%23174%3B+Core&%23153%3B+i7+Processor/9556312.p?id=1218123847836&skuId=9556312 - the HP Pavilion 17.3" with the Intel Core i7-720QM Processor (DV7-3178CA). It has a 1gb NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M and costs 1300CAD.

Can anyone tell me if it's powerful enough to do a little particle/fluid simulation and to learn compositing? (I'll be using it to play GTA4 too ;))

Also, if you know any links where I can compare mobile GPUs let me know!
olson
03-08-2010, 12:09 AM
That will be enough for basic fluid simulations but the low clock speed and relatively small memory capacity will be limiting factors in how complex you will be able to make simulations. Virtually nothing supports CUDA or OpenCL at this point so its not really an important factor in buying a system for computer graphics work. In a few years I think it'll be more common (like in mental ray for example) but its not there yet. Also OpenCL is likely to be adopted faster than CUDA since OpenCL runs on many devices and is open source, unlike CUDA which is proprietary and runs only on some nVidia products. Cheers!
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