Which Laptop? (2 options)

[C Barker]

Hi there,

I'm shooting my first project with RED Scarlet 4K soon and I'm looking to buy a laptop for either:

Dumping footage and very basic editing (which would require countless upgrades to my very old desktop if its not the primary editing tool)
or
A machine capable of taking care of pretty much everything aside from grading (or perhaps even grading if I'm feeling adventurous)

How large is the gap in capabilities (I'll be editing with CS6) between the two machines below (eg monitor quality or resolution during editing, speed, 4K potential etc)?

1) i7, 8GB RAM, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 130W Graphics (eg Dell Inspiron or equivalent) - $1k
2) i7, 12GB RAM, 3GB NVIDIA GTX 670M 3GB GDDR5 Graphics (eg MSI GT60 or equivalent) - $2k

Is the more expensive option capable of serving as a full and capable editing console? Would the cheaper one even be adequate for editing the entire film with temporarily downconverted footage, and if so would this be at a recommendable resolution?

Ultimately I'm very interested to hear how far an extra $1k or so goes on a laptop when working with RED footage.

Thanks if you can help and please let me know if I can provide any more information!

 

[Philipe Ratton]

Well, I have a MSI GT 70 and I use CS6.
I get realtime in 1/4 in premiere in a 4k timeline, no problems at all.
I also use resolve lite with his setup and it's very smooth.
Edited and graded a lot of small projects and a 30 minutes short film.
Not a single glitch.
While I wait for the new Mac pro this is my editing system.
Just add an external raid and a second monitor and you are good.
For the budget, I mean.

 

[Philipe Ratton]

Hey, forgot one thing, unlock cuda.