laptop for Maya and Mudbox

#1

Interested in doing Maya and Mudbox but my laptop chokes when doing Maya simulations and can’t really do anything useful in Mudbox. What would be good specs to look for in a laptop that can at least do an okay job of handling both?

#2

It might be tough finding a decent laptop that can handle sims or high end sculpting.
Without knowing exact specs I’d say (for laptop OR desktop) You want at least 24 GB RAM MINIMUM, and the fastest processor You can afford. When buying a processor, I like to think how much the specs will hold up 4 years down the road, will it be totally obsolete?

#3

For mudbox you need discrete nvidia card with at least 2G preferably 4 G + ram best you can afford.

#4

Please post in appropriate forums.
Moving this to the hardware forum for you.

#5

look at the Alienware laptops if your budget permits, they can push a ridiculous amount of polygons. They are pricey, but speed wise compare to a decent workstation.

Regardless of the brand IMHO you will want a i7 2.7ghz+ (preferably 3ghz+) , 32gb ram, SSD drive, and a decent gfx card (I would say the later 700 series or 800 series geforce). Spend as much as you can reasonably afford now because they generally have a shorter shelf life than a desktop and an extra $500-1000 initially may just extend its life by an extra 2yrs or so of use.

#6

Hello everyone! Since this thread is very similar to mine, I might proceed from here…

I’m buying a new laptop as my primary workstation which will replace my current MSI (i7 Sandy Bridge, 8GB ram…). Since I learned a lot about CGI in the last couple of years it just won’t hold up to my needs anymore, plus, it’s verymuch not portable. I came here for advice from professionals. What would you recommend?

However, I have some requirements. First of all, I need it to be quite lightweight. It may sound a bit contradictory to ‘workstation’, but my back has the first and the last word. I’ve been carrying this 5kg+ of weight around for two years, and apart from that not being much of a physical person and sitting through most of the day, I believe it gave it’s share to the pain in my back. Better yet, whenever I carry my computer around I can feel it. So, I want it to be as portable as, say, those Macbook Pro or Razer Blade computers. (I kind of hope for about 2.5cm [roughly 1"] height, 3kg weight])

The next feature I’d be very much grateful for is 2 Storage (HDD/SSD) slots. One will be SSD and one probably HDD… I have one SSD in my current laptop and I am willing to put it into a new system, if it won’t come with it. HDD slot would be for the storage purposes.

Since I plan to plug in external monitors a lot; preferably two (I’m having it with 17", and what’s more of a problem recently, forcing me to look downward). Therefore, I’d say I’ll need a couple of the ports for that. Mentioning that, I like to have as fine colours as I can get, even on a laptop; so the machine known for being better at representing colours wins.

From here on, there are tiny things which aren’t that much of a requirement (you can’t have everything, do you?), but if two candidates will be running for it, may come in viable. Like, power supply on the rear side (not on the left or right). And maybe some others I can’t even think of…

Now hardware, this is your turn, people. All I know is ‘Tons of ram, like, 32Gigs and as good processor as your wallet can hold up to’. Mostly I can’t decide what to look at graphics cards. As of right now I use V-Ray for rendering, but GPU renderers are coming through recently. Now, to they work better on gaming (GTX) or workstation (Quadro) cards? I hardly found a good answer so I’m not sure whether to trust them.

The software I use? Maya, Z-Brush, Photoshop, After Effects, V-Ray… Mudbox might come into play and 3Ds Max (used them both before). One day I may also try Modo, Mari and Nuke.

I don’t know if I gave you all the information you need, but it should be more than enough of guidelines for you, maybe too much. Yes, quite some of them are somewhat specific and some of you might think ‘get a desktop…’, but I do go around a lot and I like to carry my stuff with me.

A though decision and I already checked websites, but we all know there’s always stuff hiding. Many websites don’t have the tick for almost any of the requirements listed; so that’s why I’m seeking more help here. To see what the industry insiders have to tell me. Whom else to learn from if not from the best, right?

Thank you in advance for all the answers!

#7

Unfortunately I’m going to say most of your requirements are contradictory. Most of the smaller or lightweight laptops are out of the mix as even the better ones will handle only a max of 8-16gb and most seem to have their ram soldered in. They also mostly don’t have the option of the latest video cards. The only thing that I know of that comes close to your weight requirements, come in under $5,000, can take 32gb ram, come with good graphics cards / ssd drive / etc. is the MSI GT72 & Alienware 17. Both probably weigh more than you seem willing to lug around (msi 8.5 pounds / alienware 9.2 pounds).

There ARE other beasts like the Eurocom Panther but they weigh about 12 pounds and look massive, never used one but heard they are ridiculously fast, possibly even the fastest laptop you can get. The Dell Precision mobile range can take 32gb ram but you’re talking roughly double the price of any thing else you can get, even in the 15 inch version it would cost you double the cost of the Alienware or MSI for comparable specs in ram / processor / gpu , but they are quite light. That is the difference between a high end gaming laptop and a mobile workstation though, but both should be able to do the job quite effectively, you just have to figure out if your willing to pay the extra $3,000+ for something that’s only marginally better performance wise or slightly lighter.

I’m sure there’s a few other mobile workstations I haven’t looked into, most I found couldn’t accommodate 32gb ram though.

Ever thought about a nice supportive laptop backpack rather then a laptop bag? Spend some money there and find something that distributes the weight correctly and it should take some of the burden of weight off you.

#8

hey guys,
i’m in a similar situation. i use a desktop with a sandybridge i7, 24gb ram and a gtx 550 with about 2gb gram. now i’d like to be more mobile again, since i move from office to office a lot.

i looked at mbp and gaminglaptops mainly, cause i dont see the advantage of quadro-gfx-cards (does anyone?).

i ruled out the slim versions of the gaming laptops (asus, razer, msi and aorus), because they are supposed to get loud and very hot. and i sometimes have to work 10-12h/day.

so my desicion comes down to alienware 17 vs mbp 15.

so it is top specs and bulky on one hand vs slim, portable, hq-build, long battery life but maybe less performance on the other.

so my question is: how much do the better gfx-card and the bigger ra. (32 vs 16gb) in the aw17 really show in every day work? do you know any comparison tests?

the top aw17-config and the top mbp15-config are about the same price. so if the alienware would not render significantly faster (maya, c4d, after effects) than the mbp, the later would be my choice. but i’d rather have more power and carry more.

#9

You will get thermal throttling of the CPU on small laptops as they dont cool the cpu that well. My Asus 17" laptop for instance, its i7 (2.4GHz base with 3.4GHz turbo boost) throttles to about 2.9GHz for any intensive tasks like cpu rendering or fluid sims. Im perfectly happy with that but I would recommend reading reviews on a product before purchasing if that is important to you.

#10

Turbo boost doesn’t work the same when all cores are engaged.
Even on a well cooled desktop CPU when all cores fire off flat out (rendering and MTed fluid sim) you will usually get only 50% to 80% of the boost, most of the time around 70%.

A 2.4/3.4 running at full half boost when you render on all cores with HT on is actually pretty respectable, and not a matter of (lackof ) cooling throttling it too hard.
While throttling due to cooling is indeed a safety feature in Intel CPUs, what you see there (which is more prominent in laptops) is a lot more likely to be a power draw cap.

Of course a laptop isn’t meant to sit rendering 24/7 for a week, and mobile CPUs often have earlier power throttling because they are meant to have a reduced power draw partly through a wider and more frequent throttling delta, but I’d be willing to bet that even if you worked off a very cold room you wouldn’t see more than 3.0 off that CPU.

#11

That all comes down to what you define as everyday work? Also take into account, what is standard for your work today might not be for tomorrow. 16gb might be fine for your right now, but what about in 12+ months time. I have both so I can tell you the MBP is a great laptop, light, strong, quite a good performer, but the Alienware does noticeably outperform it. 2GB of Vram may sound like more than enough with the MBP, but when testing the Alienware’s limits, if I went up to 60,000,000 polygons in mudbox and had more then 2 texture layers I was already going over 2gb of VRAM usage, which the Alienware actually still had 5gb left to play with and was pushing 30+fps. Screen vs Screen, the MBP is by and far superior in that realm. Also in terms of upgradeability, basically you are stuck with whatever card you get in the Apple, but if there comes a day I need to upgrade the gfx card in the Alienware it is doable.

In short, you need to really figure out if the MBP is right for you if you go that route, because you are stuck with the 750m for the life of the laptop so the lifespan for the computer is going to be much shorter than that of the Alienware. Look at the MSI GT72 if you want another option apart from the Alienware that has upgradeable components / can hold 32gb, also a little cheaper. http://www.msi.com/product/nb/GT72-2PE-Dominator-Pro.html#hero-overview

#12

also it is worth noting the MBP battery life is far superior if that is going to be an issue with using it on the go.

#13

thx, this is what i wanted to know. so, you worked with both? would you have numbers (rendertime, viewport-fps,…)? or do you know a video/review about the comparison?

now you say, the mbp is superior? i’m a bit confused :wink: or what do you mean by “screen vs screen”?

my average workday is mainly animating medium-poly scenes and rendering with lots of raytrace stuff (ao, gi, deep refractions etc) and/or after effects with a lot of footage (big psds eg). i do motiongraphics. for final 3d renders i often use a online renderfarm. but you always have to render test-sequences locally at least. and if i have time over night, i save the money and render locally. but you see: that comes down to about 8h medium to heavy load on my working machine every workday and sometimes 100% cpu usage over the night. though, i will be able to use my current desktop as a render machine.

but the upgradeability is a very good argument. whereas my apple-fanboy-friends would argue, that mbp’s are quite value-stable. upgrading a mbp would be selling the old and buying a new one.

for now, i lean to buying the aw17. but maybe wait for a month or two. maybe they upgrade to the new nvidias (9xx) and/or broadwell cpus…

thx for your help!!
kws

#14

Dear ladies and gentlemen…

First of all, thank you all for your replies. I was about to write a reply for 2 days and in the meantime, new posts appeared. Anyway.

Now, of course I’ve been doing some research during these days and leared new stuff. First of all, apparently I do not need a ‘workstation graphics’ (like quadro), since these seem to be made for CAD. For us, rendering seems to be more viable, and that comes down to CPU and GPU renderers like Octane seem to perform better with gaming cards. That’s what their website says and I believe them. Hence, I went back into looking for gaming machines.

I think I found a candidate that will do the trick. A company, which mostly goes by the name Schenker XMG (stnads for Xtreme Multimedia & Gaming). Their P series are thin and loaded with power. Plus, not brutally expensive. With some further research, Clevo seems to be the OEM for them which doesn’t tell me anything really.

I used their online configurator, and for a little over 2.200€ you can place in a GTX 980M with 4GB RAM, Core i7-4710HQ, 32GB of DDR3 RAM @ 1600MHz, 256GB SSD + 750GB HDD. You can place a few more hardcore components in, including 4K graphics, but on 15" come on… Well, you can also get a 17", too.
The P[Pro] series link: http://mysn.co.uk/shop/xmg-pro.html
And if that’s not enough for you, they also have a W series, where you can get a GTX 980M with 8GB of RAM… however, this series seem to not be as lightweight, therefore probably cooler (or is it colder or both?).
The W[Work] series link: http://mysn.co.uk/schenker-w504

Naturally, as some of you mentioned, lightweight laptops tend to be very very hot. Even not so lightweight laptops can be very hot… Now I have to decide, whether I will bang my head to the wall every time I’ll need to carry my laptop around or facepalm myself every time I will have to render for extended periods.

As much as I looked into the MBP vs. other candidates, I’d say it comes down to your needs and your working environment. I, for example, actually plan to get myself extra monitors for work. Therefore a laptop with 15" will do the trick and most places I worked at also had extra monitors available that I could plug my computer to. MBPs have riddiculously good screens and beyond decent battery span all I know. For my case neither of the two apply, since - like said - I plan to have external screens and I almost never work on battery.

As far as cooling go, I think I’ll get myself a cooling pad when I’ll need to render. Basically my laptop will be a super portable bunch of hardware that will have mostly external components plugged in, but will be able to work for itself, too, when things won’t be available.

#15

I would have to specifically figure out a test that could be done on both platforms, I don’t really do any 3D on the MBP, I mainly use it for AdobeCC, so I’ll have to try and find a big file to render on AE or Premiere. It didn’t stand up to my tests in Mudbox though, In terms of having enough VRAM to go nuts and also the frame rate was much lower even before it ran out. I’ll get back to you with something specific on that though.

For now though if you want to know performance of the 880m over the 750m check here http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-880M-vs-GeForce-GT-750M-Mac You can see hands down you will achieve a much higher FPS in viewport just based on the maths.

CPU VS CPU they are almost identical. http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-4910MQ-vs-Intel-4980HQ Though performance gains are somewhat marginal, the 17 definitely FEELS faster if both are running windows 8.1

The actual display in the laptop, the retina display in the MBP is worlds better than the Alienware’s screen in terms of color, depth, and resolution, but the retina display suffers from pixels dying quite often (must be a manufacturing fault). This is the third display that has been put in the MBP so far, luckily Apple Care is quite comprehensive.

We all know AE can chew up the memory quite fast, faster than most 3D apps can, especially when you add in large amounts of layers, motion, and plugins/fx. Open a 1gb photoshop file with layers, add in some 4k footage and you have chewed up 16gb of ram in an instant. Perhaps you should check to see what kind of ceiling you are hitting on one of your larger compositions to see if the MBP could even handle it at 16gb. I know personally I’ve run into issues with ram and AE, especially if trying to multi-task between AE and another app such as Photoshop or Premiere. I’m currently moving most of the Adobe stuff over to the Alienware, but still need the mac for some of the plugins.

If I had to choose only one of the laptops to keep it would be the Alienware. Just day to day it feels like it performs much faster. But I still really like the MBP just for taking places like meetings and not worrying about it, its light and I have dropped it a few times without any damage, the battery will also last for a significant period of time without having to compromise much on the speed. If these kind of things are what you are looking for go for the MB, if you want out and out performance and lifespan go for the Alienware. Also another small plus for the Alienware is noise and heat, both much lower than the MBP, big plus with the heat if you use it on your lap for more than 1-2hrs.

#16

thx DVour!
that is really helpful. the numbers of the gfx-cards look pretty convincing.

and about the display. yes, now i get it. but working with windows, retina-resolution would be a bit tricky i could imagine. wouldnt al the os-gfx and texts be really small? and then, i use two external monitors anyway.

with my current ae-project, ae uses 14gb of ram for its own. together with a few chrome tabs, ps and illustrator it adds up to about 21gb already.

for surfing, skyping and that stuff (edit: even working with docs), i use my tablet. for lectures and presentations i bring my chromecast to show stuff from the tablet. works great and therefor even impresses my clients :wink:

and when i work, it will probably be at my fathers, in clients offices or at home, if it is no my own office. so power-supply would not be that much of a problem. the only thing is, when i have to fly. then a mbp would be much handier.

so hopefully aw starts shipping with broadwell and 9xx geforces this year (have to buy this year due to tax reduction ;D)

so thx again!
have a nice day

#17

a friend of a friend used a schenker some time and complained a lot about build quality and support. thats why i ruled them out. but maybe i should reconsider. problem is, before you buy you cant lay hands on a aw or a schenker in a shop or so. maybe i’ll online-order a alienware, a schenker and a msi and return those i dont like :wink:

hf&gl
kws

#18

Hey guys, check this out!

The Schenker P505 review by Notebookcheck.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Clevo-P651SE-Schenker-XMG-P505-Barebones-Notebook-Review.127978.0.html
According to this review, it’s pretty good for a lightweight gaming laptop.

It also appears that’s the same model as Eurocom M5 Pro, but I’m not entirely sure.

Also note: I’m from Europe, therefore all prices and dimension are in € and metric units respectively for my case. Also, very noticeably more expensive unfortunately…

#19

One of the biggest issues of the XMG P505 is the enormous temperature development. Up to 51 °C at the top and up to 76 °C at the bottom

thats why i thought i spend the extra bucks for the aw…