Asking advice: laptop computer for Post-production

RoadsidePicnic

Hi people, I'm needing to go mobile and considering buying a laptop. Already own a FX 6300 + R7 260x desktop, will be selling it after that.

I have a $1000 cap. I'm outside U.S. so, Dell would be better because of support here. Also need to buy on Amazon. So, find those two computers:

Dell G3 - 8th gen i7 six-cores, GTX 1050ti 4GB, two fan slim chassis; or Dell 7000 - 7th gen i7 quad-core, GTX 1060 6GB, better cooling and chassis.

Both have thunderbolt and have same price. Other things are identical or not relevant.

Application will be primary Adobe CC and Davinci, but plans use it to learn Nuke, Flame, Vegas and game development things (Godox, Unity, Unreal, Maya).

What do you think?

RoadsidePicnic

Also, have researched forums of users of some of those software and people tends to say that you need a supermicro to drawn a stickman, minimum, so think you people here can share a more realistical view.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Also, have researched forums of users of some of those software and people tends to say that you need a supermicro to drawn a stickman, minimum, so think you people here can share a more realistical view.

What you mean exactly?

eatstoomuchjam

Do you know how much of the stuff that you use is GPU accelerated? The GTX 1060 is substantially faster than the 1050ti.

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-1060-3GB-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050-Ti/3646vs3649

Performance delta between 7th and 8th generation i7 is not huge (though 2 extra cores is pretty substantial - though I'm guessing that comes at a cost in terms of clock rate - maybe 10%?

Anyway, not having used either system for anything, I'd lean toward the Dell 7000 if it has better cooling. Any benefits of your 6-core CPU will be lost (and then some) if it starts thermal throttling.

Whichever one you get, I'd be interested to hear how it performs for you in Resolve. My quad-core 6th generation i7 with a mobile GTX 9xx seems to not-quite-sufficient for 4k in Resolve (though a whole lot closer than my Surface Pro). :)

Vitaliy_Kiselev

I have a $1000 cap. I'm outside U.S. so, Dell would be better because of support here. Also need to buy on Amazon.

Why Amazon only?

If you ask me, I recommend usually Woot for deal - https://www.woot.com/category/computers/laptops?ref=w_cnt_cdet_pc_3

It is Amazon division btw.

RoadsidePicnic

@Vitaliy_Kiselev About the forums, in some threads (Davinci, Autodesk, Nuke) people say you absolutely need Quadro cards and points that laptops aren't viable because you would need xeons, 40x pcie, lots of data, etc. Can see it matters for the kind of work people expect to do, but it's not option now.

About Amazon, not my preference, a person is doing me a favor to get the computer here and asked to buy it on Amazon.

@eatstoomuchjam i7 4c hits something 8.000 cpumark, i7 6c hit 12.000, but it's in benchmark. I don't have it clear how much it translates to actual usability. For sure, I will be editing and finalizing LX100 4K 100mbps. The FX6300 get's 6.000 cpumark and is barelly usable when editing two threads of video. Would hope to learn (not work with now) 3D compositing also. Don't have a clue about Unity and that stuff. Not sure how it all mix up.

eatstoomuchjam

For whatever it's worth, I edited all of my vlogs (mostly 4k footage from A7r III and RX100 V) while overseas this Winter on a 2015 Macbook Pro (quad core i7, gtx 6xx or 7xx). It's not the smoothest thing in the world, but if you set your preview quality down to like 1/4 or 1/8 in Premiere, it is 100% usable. Both of the potential laptops that you mentioned are substantially more powerful.

I've only recently switched to Resolve so I'm not sure (yet) what options there are for increased performance through reduced preview quality (my desktop at home is fast enough that I don't need to care). I think it has an option to create "optimized" media for editing which, assuming you have the disk space for it and don't mind waiting a bit after ingesting footage, would mean that either of the above laptops should be fine.

There are trade-offs for sure - like with my older Macbook, exporting a 5-10 minute 4k vlog with some Lumetri and other minor effects could take well over an hour (during which time, the laptop became pretty unusable). For bigger exports, I'd do initial low-quality pass to watch the video all the way through and then set up a high-quality export to run overnight.

I haven't really used Unity, Nuke, or most of the other things you're talking about. For the development tools, assume that a faster CPU will be better (in general). For the graphics tools, assume the faster GPU will be better (in general). For anything, assume that better cooling is beneficial (thermal throttling will ruin your day).

In general, don't trust people online that say you need an 18-core 7980XE with dual Quadro cards and an SSD RAID connected via Thunderbolt 3 (plus an extra high-performance NVMe as scratch) to edit your 100 megabit per second 4k video. Either of those laptops should be capable, though with some limitations. Chances are that you can live with them. I got by with a lot less from the end of December through early April.

Vitaliy_Kiselev

@RoadsidePicnic

Most people are actually afraid and do not know well.

Please post links to computers.

If you are not heavy Davinci user, not to multiple nodes grading you generally will be better with 6 core computer you referenced. Problem can be cooling, as if it will start throttling it can be issue.

You can also check this - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/17719/xiaomi-mi-notebook-pro-macbook-pro-competition#Item_13 . GPU is weaker (ala GT 1030), but overall it is nice thing for not very heavy editing.

RoadsidePicnic

@Vitaliy_Kiselev Seems like things changed since last time I checked but

G3779 - six core (now out of stock): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BXWHSRW

7000 - four core (look like prices changed): https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-15-7000-Quad-Core/dp/B078XL5R1M/

RoadsidePicnic

Looks like it's G3579 inside (similar smaller model):

RoadsidePicnic

And here it's 7577 inside: https://i1.wp.com/laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/IMG_20171123_131307.jpg

Vitaliy_Kiselev

Well, here is algorithm

Search for "i7-8750H"

Click on 16GB RAM option

RoadsidePicnic

@Vitaliy_Kiselev @eatstoomuchjam Settled with the 8750H because the gtx 1060 platform became more pricier anyway. Thanks, guys. Will be receiving it by july, is there any kind of test I can do with it that you should be interested??

eatstoomuchjam

Just let me know if it can play back 4k footage in Resolve at a smooth 30 fps with a couple of luts applied. :)

ttancredi

@roadsidepicnic. I'm on the exact same scenario. (outside of US need Dell because of global warranty) the only difference is I will use davinci with raw cinema dng 1080/2k (digital Bolex) - and eventually panasonic 4k on a 1080 timeline.

I'm between the dell new dell xps15 9570 gtx1050ti hexa core I7 -8750h and the dell G3 with same config. but gtx1060. ( and worst screen - I would than either change the panel or use external monitor for more serious projects). Do you guys think this is enough for raw 2k coloring? I wouldn't use stabilizers or noise reduction heavily, and don't care 1/4 playback..