Yes Massassi. I want to spend about $600 on a laptop, but I don't know what brand to get. My last two were Dells, but you can only fool a Firefly twice. What are the best ones in terms of reliability/not falling to **** after a couple years?

What do you want to use it for?

When someone wants a durable laptop, I usually recommend a Thinkpad. They do have Thinkpads within your budget, but I don't know if they are powerful enough to fit your needs.

I had a Compaq... didn't last long.

Now I have a Toshiba, it's great. so that's my recommendation.

I've had my Dell since '07 with no problems

I have a Compaq and I love it ($400 a couple years ago). Family members have other stuff..one being an HP that pretty much went to poop (keyboard isn't quite right, finish is wearing off). I have heard good things about Thinkpads.

I don't use laptops often, so if I need one I typically wait for a $400 front-page slickdeals.net item.

Mostly 3D work. I'd like to at least be able to run the current crop of Source games on it, since I'm modding but at this point it's probably worth investing that can handle UDK.

Uh, get a bigger budget or get a desktop, then.

Eat my shorts. There's plenty of laptops on Newegg in that price range that could handle it. I'm asking which is the ~best~

Can you be more specific about what you mean when you say "3d work?" There's a big difference between playing around with ued and doing serious work in zbrush.

I have an HP-G61, it's a cheap basic mobile machine and that's all I need. I do like HP though and if I had the money I would've simply gotten the next model up.

Serious work in Mudbox, maybe Zbrush, plus all the low-poly stuff that goes with it.

My desktop right now has a core 2 duo @2.4 plus 4GB of RAM and a 4870, and I'm reasonably happy with how it handles sculpting. The laptops I was looking at on newegg seem comparable, but I could be missing something.

It's easy to match the CPU and RAM, the problem is the GPU. At this price range, if a discrete GPU is even offered, it's not powerful enough to be useful. At the absolute upper end you're looking at the same performance as a 7 year old desktop card. (I'm not exaggerating.)

If you're serious about getting work done on a laptop, I guarantee you will be disappointed with anything you buy at this budget.

I've had lots of luck with Toshiba's remaining in good shape over a long time.

My Lenovo netbook takes quite a beating, so I have some faith in Lenovo too.

Ouch, okay. I was looking at something along these lines: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157466

If I can't do serious sculpting work for that price it's not a dealbreaker--I'm not looking to replace my desktop and presumably I can block stuff out at lower resolutions and finish on the desktop later.

My guess is that would be ok, what the specs of the system you are currently running it on?

I couldnt find any mention of Mudbox or Zbrush using anything like ATI Stream/Cuda/OpenCL. Although Mudbox requires a 'Certified Hardware Accellerated OpenGL adapter', I don't think that means it requires a Quadro or Firestream videocard.

The feature set won't be the problem. All of the video cards officially supported by Autodesk are DX10 or better; Mobility 5650 is DX11, it's just slow.

According to random forums, Mudbox does use the GPU for sculpting while Zbrush uses the CPU. If this is true it's bad news, but I'd expect Zbrush to work alright.

Yes, that's what it means. Mudbox would probably work on any DX10 card (unless it's DX10 'on paper' like Intel GMA,) but Autodesk won't support it unless it's running on a Quadro or FireGL/FirePro/Firestream with specific driver versions.

Precision M6500, budgets be damned!

Can you clarify this for me, since I see alot of threads about people constructing builds for 3d Modeling, CAD, Video Rendering, ect?

Does this mean:

1) The application will run fine, the consumer gpu will run at identical performance to its workstation gpu but Autodesk will not officially support this configuration so you cant contact tech support with issues.

2) The application will run, but the consumer gpu will run at reduced performance compared to workstation gpu due to driver level tweaks. Again no techsupport will be avaliable from Autodesk due to a non-certified system.

3) The application not detecting a compatible GPU will not use any 3D acceleration or refuse to run.

Is 2) the most likely answer for the majority of 3d modelling/autocad software? Usually if its for a home built system, most people dont care about application tech support (sorta like how in 20+ years of building Windows based PC's I never called MS tech support). Of course a business would probably pay extra for the certified hardware.

All of these are possible, but it's mostly #1.

There honestly aren't any meaningful differences between a Quadro and a GeForce. Quadros generally use parts with fewer defects, use ECC memory and way more of it. Drivers are engineered toward consistent IQ at the expense of performance, and they have line antialiasing (line aa is disabled on consumer level cards, although it works in the DX debug runtime.) It's just supposed to be a beefier, more reliable version of the consumer grade part - like everything else in a workstation.

I think really old versions of some programs used to crash if you weren't running it on a workstation card (max, maya or softimage... don't remember) but I haven't heard of this happening recently. Not for any technical reason, but because they special-cased some rendering code and couldn't be bothered to do it for the consumer cards.

It's not great for the one-off home user/student/software pirate, but it's not worth the cost to give them support. Autodesk's real customers are paying them $4000 a seat, and those same customers need reliability. Autodesk guarantees it to them under certain configurations.

Toshiba is solid.

Thanks.

I'll second that. Thinkpads rock. My sister still uses a 12 year old IBM Thinkpad. They are rock solid and Lenovo continues to improve them. Typing this now on a T43P.

Can I recommend the X120E? Engadget just posted a review. Starts at $399.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/07/lenovo-thinkpad-x120e-review/

I always wondered, when Lenovo took over (?) the IBM Thinkpad line, did they generally maintain the quality? I've seen older business people and engineering students still use the IBM Thinkpads (ones before Lenovo took over), but I have that x100e "Thinkpad". Not that I'm complaining about the build quality of mine. A lot of people I've seen really take to the x201 models.

edi:just realized a new x120e is coming out, fixes the x100e's glaring problems. Should have waited, **** I'm stupid.

Yeah I'm definitely eying the x120e. Lenovo has made a greater effort to market to the home user as opposed to the exclusively business marketed IBM thinkpad. Incidentally you see Lenovo laptops with quality consistent with IBM and those less so. The X120E is a great example. Very happy with what Lenovo has done to improve the thinkpad line so far.

I ended up getting the HP. It's scoring high for ME2, although the can you run it site seems kind of hit and miss. Also the touchpad is terrible.



I'm gonna install mudbox tomorrow and see what happens.