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Thread: Laptop for design.

  1. #11
    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Houses4Rent View Post
    generally speaking: I thought the more cores the better as that is the only way things can run in parallel? A faster single processor can only handle one thing at the time.
    True, but you'll find very few software can actually run in parallel (with themselves that is). One which is "embarrassingly parallel" is rendering - i.e. once you've modeled the 3d shape then added all the materials, lights & effects (which is 99% of the actual work), you send it through the rendering process which can use multiple cores (and some of them can even use multiple PCs at once).

    Generally for something like 3d modeling (3dStudio, Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Blender are some of what I've used before) the modeling process itself (i.e. that where you actually spend more than 90% of your own time) has no parallelism whatsoever. So for this portion of the actual work, a faster CPU for a single thread is better than a bunch of slower cores. Some of these have attempted to do stuff like real-time display using multiple cores or even the massively multiple cores of the GPU, but they still have very little success in the actual use of the program (i.e. the functions for modifying and creating models).

    Though I'd advise something with at a bare minimum 2 cores, preferably 4. Seeing as you tend to make use of more than one program at a time. Thus while one of them has that hour-glass / circle going you can continue with the other.

    In general (for Revit) I try to get something with at least 3GHz and around 4 cores. Some mobile chips have a "turbo" feature which "steps up" the Hz from somewhere in the 2GHz to just over 3GHz - so usually that's reasonable (just remember to keep your hands away from the vents else they'll blister).
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  2. #12
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    You can search on the B2C website for more choice...

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    Hi Irneb

    This info u provided really was helpful. Also with a cuda enables gpu shoukd make 3d rendering easier and more capable. I shall see what else i can find out .. appreciate the info you provided

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    What software do you use?

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    at the moment General software ..photoshop and corel. only now i am looking at 3D and web software. since i need a matte based display i would rather get a proper power machine one time instead of gettign something weaker and then landing in a problem.

  6. #16
    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dragon View Post
    at the moment General software ..photoshop and corel. only now i am looking at 3D and web software. since i need a matte based display i would rather get a proper power machine one time instead of gettign something weaker and then landing in a problem.
    For those 2 the choices you've listed are way beyond required (probably even beyond recommended). 3D is probably going to be your highest demand software - there it depends from program to program (e.g. SketchUp is much more "lightweight" than Revit, but isn't doing the things Revit can do). Web? If you're just going to use a web page WISIWYG program like DreamWeaver - then that's even less power/memory hungry than the 2D editors, so I'd not worry too much about it.

    Are you going to run a web server on your Laptop? You sure? Perhaps for development purposes. In which case you might want to up the RAM & hard drive and install a VM (i.e. a 2nd operating system running inside a virtual machine) for the server, that way you can pick-n-choose from many server OSs (including even Linux) and they won't interfere with the working of your "workstation". But I'd definitely recommend a true PC instead of a laptop for production servers, much more capability to extend stuff like disc space.

    Whenever someone asks: "What PC/Laptop do I need?" The first step is always: "What do you actually want to do?" After which you need to choose the software which allows you to do those things. And then you look across all the software you'd need - listing their recommended minimums. Choose the hardware so it's on par or better than the highest minimum of your chosen software.

    Note with 3D many of them require very good graphics cards. Some even require better than a high-end gaming card. Yet some "state" they require something awesome, but then when you test it you find it's not really the case. E.g. most AutoDesk products recommend Quadro instead of GeForce and FirePro instead of Radeon. But from my own experience if you go with an entry-level Quadro (around the same price as a very high-end GeForce ~R3000) the same priced GeForce will give you more performance - it's only once you get to the truly expensive cards (R10,000 + for the card itself) where there's a noticeable difference between a R3000 GeForce and a R12000 Quadro (same applies to AMD's Radeon vs FirePro's).

    And that's usually the reason I steer clear of a Laptop as a graphics workstation. For the sort of 3D work I do it becomes exorbitantly expensive to get a decently performing Laptop in comparison to a PC.

    As an example, we have one guy needing to travel to various countries across Africa and he needed a very decent Laptop to compare to his workstation in the office. His workstation cost around R30,000 total, but when we speced a laptop with the same capabilities we ended up with this: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...n&s=bsd&cs=04&. And after configuring it to match the PC it was around $4500 ~ R48,000
    Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz
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  7. #17
    Gold Member irneb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dragon View Post
    Hi Irneb

    This info u provided really was helpful. Also with a cuda enables gpu should make 3d rendering easier and more capable. I shall see what else i can find out .. appreciate the info you provided
    You're welcome!

    Anyhow, the cuda idea isn't bad ... but if the models are complex (like mine) the trouble is that the graphics card's RAM is too small to use as a rendering device. And moving data from the PC's RAM back-n-forth to the GPU's actually slows down the process rather than speeds it up - i.e. the massively parallel GPU is mostly waiting for the non-parallel CPU and bridge connections between RAM and GPU. So as long as the entire model can fit into the GPU's RAM then cuda "should" perform very well - i.e. similar to the real-time rendering inside games (which is exactly what it's designed to do).

    E.g. the current project I'm doing now (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...#post112853232) used all of 16GB just to open in 3dStudio - then when rendering it used an extra 12GB over that. When opening the working model in Revit it uses 13GB for just up to the podium level (i.e. below ground). Most graphics cards simply don't have that amount of RAM built in.
    Gold is the money of kings; silver is the money of gentlemen; barter is the money of peasants; but debt is the money of slaves. - Norm Franz
    And central banks are the slave clearing houses

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    Wow....those renders are mind blowing...

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    HOLY HELL that really is awesome work,

    well in the near future i do hope to do work that comes atleast 50% close to the type of rendering/ Designs you do i see what you mean, but for now im going to learn 3D so basics for now (might as well look at a machine)
    but i still need a laptop for portability even if its not as good...

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    Looks like a magnificent project, but looking at the Discovery project, I just can not think negatively on the number of claims which are paid way late and rejected, I can now see where all the money is going to, and its not for medical benefits.
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