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Which of these three laptops would be better suited for Zbrush, 3dsmax etc

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#1

I am trying to deceide on these 3 laptops… I will mainly use them for Zbrush, XSI, 3dsmax, Adobe Cs3 Creative Suite

the laptops I am looking at are

HP Pavilion dv7-1285dx

-2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8600

  • RAM: 6GB DDR2 memory For multitasking power, expandable to 8GB. 1066MHz frontside bus, 3MB L2 cache
  • 500GB Serial ATA hard drive (5400 rpm)
    -NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics 512mb

or

Gateway P-7805u

-Intel® Centrino® 2 processor technology with interrelated Intel® Core™2 Duo processor P8400

-4GB DDR3 memory For multitasking power. 1066MHz frontside bus, 3MB L2 cache and 2.26GHz processor speed.

-320GB SATA hard drive (7200 rpm)

-NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS graphics
Features 1GB of GDDR3

or

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9173262&type=product&id=1218044029168

(cheaper)

Overall I am more thinking between the HP and Gateway. This will not be my main workstation. Just to use when I am away. Will be getting a laptop in the next week.

#2

I have the Gateway before that one. Got it from Best Buy. I love it, and i believe you will find that the ram AND Processor are user upgradeable (even shows how in the manual). The video card is more than adequate.

I also use a lenovo tablet. It has a ultra low voltage processor (that means a slow dual core) with intel integrated graphics (that means slow graphics processor). Guess what? It runs Zbrush smooth and silky! I am totally surprised. It does have 4gb ram however, so make sure you get one that will allow you to upgrade that. My vote is still for the Gateway. Upgrade it to windows 7 64 bit before the free version becomes unavailable in June. I am running Z brush on my home workstation with windows 7 64 bit ultimate, and it runs trouble free so far.
Cheers!

#3

I’m using a G50VT-B1 (the big-brother of the GV50VT-X5 that Best Buy sells.)

Pluses: You can kit out the G50VT with 8GB of RAM (not supported officially by ASUS, but it is supported.) Fairly good recovery system (I used it once for a test.) The G50VT body supports two internal hard drives, which can be handy. It’s very fast and the display is defect-free (ASUS guarentees Zero-dead pixels first 30 days.)

Minuses: It’s ASUS, which gets mixed reviews on quality. While mine has been functioning great, they are “enthusiast” PCs which tend to push the envelop to satisfy gamers. This means not all components are as long-lived as they ought to be. Running it Turbo mode will likely shorten componenent lives, but you will get good overclocked performance. It’s also somewhat heavy compared to similar offerings. For me this hasn’t been a problem, but you could probably knock a couple of pounds off going to a Macbook Pro and installing Vista on that (my other laptop.) Battery life is generally poor on PC’s of this class (it’s not really ASUS specific), but again, that’s the trade for high performance.

Overall, if performance on the go is your thing, and you want a “desktop-away-from-your-desktop” level of performance, then the G50VT family might be for you.

I looked closely at the the HP family and Gateway machines a few months agao, and concluded they were also very seviceable machines. I don’t think you’ll be disatstified Vis-a-vis 3D work with either. To max out memory for ZB, you need a 6GB or 8GB configuration (ZB can use 4GB and Vista will eat near a 1 GB if you let it have its way.) On 4GB machines, you will only have about 3GB of RAM free for ZB which will cut you back on Model density about 25%. I’ve been comfortable at both 4GB and 8GB with 3DSmax, but ZB loves it memory.

(The HP config you pointed to looks like an excellent machine for running ZB.)

-K

#4

Go with HP over Gateway, I know I have a part-time job at Geek Squad.

#5

The Gateway’s have strong reputations for giving you a good value in a gaming laptop, which translates into a more than adequate laptop for 3d. Mine has been abused, but I would not hesitate to buy one again, when you factor in the upgradeable processor ram and hard drives, it’s just a tremendous value.

#6

whatever you do, go get an external drive to back to as well. Nothing worse than those flimsy notebook/laptop hard drives.
Lemo