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Hello all,
I am thinking of getting one of the new Dell Studio laptops and they only come with the 256MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3450. I am wondering does anyone know much about them. In other words will it run the likes of 3D Max or even Unreal ED (unreal ED on low spec).I sort of need one for going back to college next year, will have a good bit of video editing to do and I want something of my own to work on. Plus it will be cool to surf the web in other rooms etc.
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Hi Matt,
The whole "laptop" debate could go on for ever. And more than likely will.
I was in the same sort of boat a few years back, and I ended up getting a laptop, a real high-spec, "brick-phone-book."
It worked out ok, but there was some things that drove me crazy.
Trying to debug fullscreen applications on a single "monitor" is impossible.
Even with native resolution of 1400×1050 (this was 2001!!!) Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, all had way too many tabs and toolbars, which again drove me crazy.Oh, and then there is the "fixed hardware." Once you buy it your stuck with whats under the hood.
If you can afford it, get a workstation, dual (if not triple) monitors, and a hefty nVidia card, and then see about getting something cheap and cheerful to surf the web on the go.
As good as 256MB is on a graphics card, workstations are shipping with GeForce 768MB/1GB cards, which will leave your laptop in the dust in no time.
I know, I know, its horrible, but until laptops get easier to upgrade, we’re stuck with it.
Regards,
B. -
Well i have a nice PC at home 4GB RAM over clocked 8800 etc. So its is more a second, portable PC.
You should see what some of the PC’s are like in college. 15" tube screens, 128MB RAM. Cheep ass intel graphics processors.
lol just been looking at some other forums and people are talking about the next windows and which current pc’s will run it!
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I recently got a high spec dell xps m1530 laptop. Couldnt have been arsed customising it much.
Pretty good for graphics development etc.
2ghz dual core,
4gb ram,
256 nvidia 8600 GT M.
15.4′ wide screen.
HDMI out,Lots of other stuff included for a reasonable price. Thing is very light and portable too. Definately, great for most development.
For 3d max, as far as i can see ram is the most important for this tool. I’m sure Pete and all the other regular max users on here can comment more on that aspect. But ram seems to be the most common complaint when it comes to max.
As for the argument of full screen debugging (and triple monitors?? c’mon most developers would be lucky to have two :P ), your going to have this issue with anything that isnt a dual screen system at least. Although it really annoys me, why people dont debug in windows mode is beyond me. Seems to me, typically people dont support windows mode because they are too lazy to write the code to reload everything on a graphics mode switch.. If you are then just use managed directx and be done with it.
Conclusion, id say go for a nice xps, their sweet, tidy, reasonably priced and they’re awesome for development.
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The XPS M1730 Rocks…for development and Crysis!
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The back-lit keyboard looks good …. and it’s really useful … even if you touch type!
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the 1720 is gone again. Fuck it going for a studio 15, looked at a few others (on other sites) and this one really looks dead on. Its so fucking hard to know whats what these days.
And forum fan boys dont help.
Dont really want a 17" laptop as well.
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For those of you wishing to have some cool screen real estate, debugging…or even game play…I can recommend one of these …. they’re the dogs jewels.
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Cool!!!!!
I might be able to buy one of those soon :shock:
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