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Laptop for 2019 - Main Setup Replacement

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Russell M Johnston

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So next year I will be spending a lot of my time on the road shooting and clients wanting edits faster and some even same day. Right now I am editing on a desktop I built a few years ago, has an I think 5th gen 6 core I7, 16gb of ram, Titan X graphics card and SSD for editing with HDD external for storage. Been seeing alot of laptops using the new 8700 6 core i7, would that be good or close to what I am using now? What kind of graphics card am I am looking for in the laptop world that can run what I am doing well. I shoot on Raven and shooting most of the time 8:1 with some 5:1 thigns as well.

Also, I would like to see if I can have an SSD to have as my boot drive and software drive then a faster NVMe or M2 card for editing on. Will use external HDD and Raids for storage. If there are any laptops out there please let me know what would be best in my budget, trying to not go over $2000 for this one. Should say this will be main setup. My desktop will be for sale as soon as I buy it since it will just sit at home most of the time.
 
I would suggest a 2 piece solution with an expansion box and laptop working together. Yes, the external chassis will likely require electrical power so it wouldn't be as mobile - but on the flip side, without a mondo graphics card on board, the laptop should last longer on a charge when power is unavailable. Don't forget that you could still do rough cuts and organize footage fluidly, albeit with low rez proxies, even without the external box. Bus powered external SSDs from Samsung and others could provide access to media files so they aren't "trapped" in the expansion chassis.

Another benefit is that you may be able to hook up the expansion box to a desktop system when desired to keep your bomber GPU at work.

Bottom line - a high performance GPU in a laptop typically has to be throttled due to power and heat dissipation realities, likely capping performance below your stated needs.

Cheers - #19
 
So is there a reason to keep my current Titan X? Maybe use it in a box at home on the bigger jobs? Or is it so old that it wont work with modern laptops.
 
Since you already have the Titan-X, it doesn't cost you anything but time to test 'er out. Just be sure the external chassis you get has the latest I/O ports, that way you can upgrade your GPU when it makes sense (nice sale on 2080s and a big gig for example). GPUs love throughput, make sure you look at the actual bandwidth of the external device - not just the theoretical or "up to" BS.

Cheers - #19
 
Will have to keep that in mind, lots to look into as to what external docks to use and the what laptops can use them then.
 
Russell M Johnston said:
So is there a reason to keep my current Titan X? Maybe use it in a box at home on the bigger jobs? Or is it so old that it wont work with modern laptops.
Click to expand...

Which Titan X is it? They had three generations of Titan X. The third was renamed to the Titan Xp a few months after launch as they finally decided to clarify somewhat. The Titan X models coincide with the GTX 980, 1080 and 1180, being a small step up from them with more RAM.

Keeping your GPU to use as an eGPU in an enclosure may make sense, depending on which one it is and depending on which notebook. I recommend getting a notebook that has at least two Thunderbolt 3 ports. So in the PC world that means you only have about 5 to choose from. On the Mac side of the spectrum, nVidia cards don’t work as eGPUs at this time. The 15” MacBook Pro was just updated with the new AMD Vega Mobile GPU options in the last 48 hours. The 6-core with Vega 20 and 32GB RAM is a great option. Expensive, but great.

Your $2K budget is going to be pretty restrictive. I don’t think you’re going to manage a 6-core CPU with GTX1070 or better GPU and decent RAM and storage for that price. Or at least not without some serious compromise somewhere.
 
I think its the first Titan X. Could be second. Should have said I have no want to go to mac. I have seen a few Asus laptops that have some great specs for about 2300 so I may end going that route as well.
 
ASUS has some good options, DELL/Alienware as well and there are specials right now and next week with all the Black Friday hoopla. I like the performance models Lenovo has right now, definitely take a look there. MSI are good and easy to configure, but their displays are trash. And take a look at Razer... Their new 15” is pretty nice and build quality is rather good compared to previous offerings.

I recommended above to get a system with two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Lenovo and some others have that right now. If you plan to use any eGPU setup, having two TB3 ports covers you for GPU and storage. Ultimately you can get by with a 10Gbps USB 3.1 and/or 10G Ethernet to connect your external storage, so that may open up more options to fit in your approximately $2K budget.
 
I am also looking at laptops. FWIW, here is my research.

The big issue with high-performance laptops is cooling. This new vapor chamber technology has made some slick thin laptops. Personally, I want to avoid the 10-pound beasts. All will have the i7-8750H, 16GB/32GB DDR4 RAM, and 1070 Max-Q hardware so performance is pretty similar. The price is about $2,000. After Retina, I can't go back to 1080, so I want a 4K screen. I also want storage since it is for RED footage. Here is what I found:

THIN:
Razer Blade 15 4k - super cool (black MacBook), well built, but only has only 1 slot for an NVME SSD. (I really would like this, but only 1 storage slot)
Dell XPS 15 - very well built, only 1050 GPUs (not a contender)
Alienware m15 - well built, twice the size of competitors (contender)
Aero 15x - my choice, 4k monitor AND 2 x m2 storage slots. I can easily add a 2nd 16GB RAM chip and 2nd m2 NVME storage drive (maybe 1 or 2 TB).
MSI GS65 Stealth Thin - OK built some flex, 2 m2 NVME slots, another strong contender. Good heat management. Pain to upgrade hardware because of upside down mobo.
MacBook Pro - new GPU will be a Vega 20, price is nearly double competitors (not a contender)
Asus Rog Zephyrus - blah. Old fashioned looking (big bezels) and heavy (not a contender)

I believe the Lenovo and Acer make similar offerings, but these were the main reviews I saw.

BEASTS:
If you solely want performance and don't care about cost or size, you can custom order an Origin which can have 2 x 1080 GPUs. Or get the Acer Predator 500 with the Ryzen 7 2700 CPU and Vega 56 GPU, however it weighs 11 pounds with power brick (8.8 pounds alone). It also only has a mediocre 1080 17.3 in display. Also, the 10.3 pound ROG Chimera G703GI is a beast with the i9 8950K with a GTX 1080.
 
Ended up grabbing a Acer Predator 500 with the I7 and 1070 card in it for now. Got one open box in great shape for $1500. It has two thunderbolts 3 ports if I want to run my Titan X at home and such. Can do up to 64gb of ram and has two m2 ports that I plan on putting 2tb sticks in each one for having as my editing disk while on the road, then dropping footage when I get home to the normal harddrives. I understand its a big ass laptop but it is what it is at this point.
 
Sounds like a solid choice Russell. Don't know the particular TB3 implementation on that unit, some laptops bottleneck the bus bandwidth of TB3 ports by assigning too little bandwidth (PCIe lanes for example) to them to actually perform to the TB3 spec. Hopefully, the Acer Predator 500 will support an eGPU over TB3 at least as well as the components can.

Cheers - #19
 
Yes, I’m also not familiar with the specifics of that Acer. Several of the PC notebooks out there that have dual TB3 ports are running two ports off a single header, meaning you can’t get full bandwidth to each port simultaneously, it’s shared. Additionally, some are also starving their ports of bandwidth, as Blair says. I fault Intel for much of that. Each TB3 header is supposed to be backed by 4 lanes of PCIe v3. Intel makes a dual-head module that can sit on 8 lanes (and should), yet it’s possible to install it on a 4-lane bus. Additionally, TB headers (all versions) have allowed for dual shared ports. It makes it convenient to connect more devices that way, but bandwidth is shared between them. And the *ONLY* company that comes right out and advertises that their ports are all full-bandwidth is Apple. They’re also the only ones putting more than two TB3 ports on a system. The Lenovo P1 has dual full-bandwidth ports, as do a couple other notebooks, but one has to dig to get the info.

All that said, it may or may not be a big deal. Using an eGPU to accelerate computational work is actually not a huge bandwidth hog — hence why it works well over TB in the first place. Same with storage... You’re not going to use 40Gbps of sustained bandwidth to your external RAID on a notebook... Just not happening. So yeah, you’re probably good as long as there’s at least 4 [unshared] lanes of PCIe v3 backing those ports.
 
Looking into different laptops but it is tricky to find a good monitor (if you are not picking Apple). Any advice?
Predator 500 had a pretty good monitor, Razer 15 had a pretty bad monitor and MSI GS65 was bad. Have not been able to seem more in a store.

/Andreas
 
Gotta vote for FCPX for editing, Resolve for color.
 
I also really like FPCX for editing. I thought round tripping last time I tried was not a great experience to Resolve.
But I just do not like most Apple hardware so do not think I will go back to Apple land.
 
Looking at the MSI GT75. So 4.5kg heavy with a 17" IPS Level (whatever that means) with 100% Adobe RGB.
MSI seems to have the best cooled laptops around. But yea a bit worried about the screen quality.

Andreas
 
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