Mobile workstation

[Dennis S.]

Hey guys,

we are about to purchase a replacement for our rather old Macbook Pro (late 2011), its about damn time.
An obvious choice would be to purchase a new Macbook Pro (mid 2015) but considering the expensive bto upgrades, there are surely alternatives.
Furhermore, having a little bit more freedom when it comes to hardware choices or doing upgrades yourself is always something we consider a plus.

I would like to have your opinions on a workstation notebook that ia able to compete with the current crystalwell macbooks in terms of performance while giving more flexibility:
We are mostly dealing with 5K material from the RED Epic and will eventually have to work with the DJI Inspire 1 Pro which creates AdobeDNG(RAWs) after export.
Premiere CC and Resolve should also run as good as possible.

A few suggestions on my part:

- Dell Precisions
- HP ZBook G3

Anything else?
Thank you.

Dennis

 

[scott devitte]

Hey guys,

we are about to purchase a replacement for our rather old Macbook Pro (late 2011), its about damn time.
An obvious choice would be to purchase a new Macbook Pro (mid 2015) but considering the expensive bto upgrades, there are surely alternatives.
Furhermore, having a little bit more freedom when it comes to hardware choices or doing upgrades yourself is always something we consider a plus.

I would like to have your opinions on a workstation notebook that ia able to compete with the current crystalwell macbooks in terms of performance while giving more flexibility:
We are mostly dealing with 5K material from the RED Epic and will eventually have to work with the DJI Inspire 1 Pro which creates AdobeDNG(RAWs) after export.
Premiere CC and Resolve should also run as good as possible.

A few suggestions on my part:

- Dell Precisions
- HP ZBook G3

Anything else?
Thank you.

Dennis

I have the XPS 9550. Love it, but if I was doing it now would get a precision because you can have two drives on board.

 

[Dennis S.]

Thanks for your feedback Scott.
I forgot to mention that the notebook should be able to deal with 4K workflows more or less withput breaking a sweat.
Of course its not an absolute requirement to be able to wtach 4K on the notebook itself but it c ertainly would come in handy. (mayber one with a good UHD IPS display)

 

[ericyoung]

Jarred likes these:
https://fstoppers.com/originals/my-...e=FS_RSS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=Main_RSS

 

[Phil Holland]

Dell, MSI, Acer.

3 places to start.

I'm currently using an MSI system.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If you absolutely must buy now, then I would start with looking at Dell. For notebooks make sure you get a quad-core i7 with 32GB RAM and fast SSD storage. Look for a good GPU. New Kaby Lake CPUs and new nVidia Pascal based mobile GPUs are due soon, so that is looming close on the horizon, probably end of this year or early Q1 next year. There are other mobile options with desktop CPUs and GPUs if you want more power, but then you're effectively lugging around a desktop system in a compromised form factor. Notebooks built on those components usually die prematurely and I have never owned one that I didn't melt by actually trying to use it. If you go with such a system in a larger than notebook form factor, then it's built into some form of a Pelican style case or something and after going that route, I've determined that just plain sucks. Some people like that sort of thing. But in reality the latest performance notebooks are doing just fine and if you need serious power beyond that, then you need a real desktop workstation that you're not going to be lugging around with you.

 

[Dennis S.]

Thanks for all your replies so far.
What do you think of the Macbook Pro (Mid2015) in comparison to the Dell XPS you mentioned?
How does the GTX 960M of the XPS compare to the ATI R9 M370X of the Macbook Pro, esepcially in Redcine X Pro and Premiere CC?
Iris Pro is probably not doing much of a difference.

 

[Elsie N]

Dell, MSI, Acer.

3 places to start.

I'm currently using an MSI system.

Same here... just wish I had chosen the 4k screen option.

 

[scott devitte]

Thanks for all your replies so far.
What do you think of the Macbook Pro (Mid2015) in comparison to the Dell XPS you mentioned?
How does the GTX 960M of the XPS compare to the ATI R9 M370X of the Macbook Pro, esepcially in Redcine X Pro and Premiere CC?
Iris Pro is probably not doing much of a difference.

After a few days with 4k touch there is no going back.

 

[Maik Müller]

Just something to keep in mind, NVIDIA's Pascal-GPUs will soon be released for mobile platforms. August 19th is the last date for the launch-event i have heard of.

Also, the first notebooks with OLED-screens are popping up, so that might be something to keep an eye on too.