Which laptop from these 4?

[farkas]

Hi there,

I am planning to buy a lap top during the january clearance.
I would use Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign CS5 softwares in addition with a 3D software(Rhino). It would be used for a bit of multitasking and basic graphic design.
I am looking for a fast budget laptop, and not sure wich one to buy from the following four Dell laptops. I have no idea wich one of those video cards is the best. I know the resolutions are not the best but that was what my budget allowed me. Should I think in a different brand?Any help would be greatly appreciated!

1.Dell Inspiron 15R £539
processor:
3rd Generation Intel®
Core™ i5-3210M
processor (3M Cache, up
to 3.10 GHz)
operating system:
Window s 8 64bit, English
Display:
15.6in High Definition
(1366X768) WLED w ith
TrueLife
Memory:
6GB DDR3 SDRAM at
1600MHz
Hard drive:
1TB (5,400rpm) Serial
ATA Hard Drive
Video card:
1GB AMD Radeon HD
7670M



2.Dell Inspiron 15R £559
processor:
3rd generation Intel®
Core™ i7-3632QM
processor (up to 3.2GHz,
6M cache)
operating system:
Window s 8 64bit, English
Display:
15.6in High Definition
(1366X768) WLED w ith
TrueLife
Memory:
6GB DDR3 SDRAM at
1600MHz
Hard drive:
1TB (5,400rpm) Serial
ATA Hard Drive
Video card:
Intel HD Graphics 4000

3. Dell Inspiron 15R special edition £579
processor:
3rd generation Intel®
Core™ i5-3210M
processor (2.50 GHz, 3M
cache
operating system:
Window s 8 64bit, English
Display:
15.6in High Definition
(1366X768) WLED w ith
TrueLife
Memory:
6GB DDR3 SDRAM at
1600MHz
Hard drive:
750GB Serial ATA
(5400RPM)
Video card:
2GB AMD Radeon HD
7730M


4.Dell inspiron 15R special edition £599
processor:
3rd generation Intel®
Core™ i5-3210M
processor (2.50 GHz, 3M
cache
operating system:
Window s 8 64bit, English
Display:
15.6in High Definition
(1366X768) WLED w ith
TrueLife
Memory:
8GB DDR3 SDRAM at
1600MHz
Hard drive:
1TB Serial ATA
(5400RPM)
Video card:
2GB AMD Radeon HD
7730M

 

[luxology]

I assume you've probably heard the whole spiel about laptops not being the ideal workstation for heavy 3D or design work, but if not I will summarise it for you: GPUs in laptops just can't compete with dedicated cards in desktops. The CPUs can though. As a secondary point, I can't see you getting more than 2 hard drives in a laptop, so if you're serious about rendering (and still need convincing), you'll see that getting a SSD or another HDD for scratch space is not going to happen on a laptop.

Still want a laptop? I would go with a different brand personally; I've bought Dell before and was somewhat disappointed at what I got for my money. I would recommend asking around for better brands, good & bad experiences etc.

If you want one of those four, which to pick? I am not sure. I will not pretend I know which of those deals are the best for your money. But since you won't be relying on those GPUs to do the grunt of the work, I would go with No. 2 to get the i7 processor.

I will say that none of those options include a full HD screen. This could bug you. My laptop has a WXGA screen and it is OK. But if you are working on something 1920x1080, I assume you will want to see each and every pixel. Also the full HD screen will allow more toolbars/buttons etc. I know that in some countries Dell will let you upgrade your screen for a fee.

Other thoughts:
- Careful about getting Windows 8. I have been caught out with some incompatible software (mostly smaller tools, but Rhino/Adobe will be fine).
- I've read (correct me if I am wrong) that it is better to get RAM in multiples of 2 (1,2,4,8 GB etc). Probably doesn't matter much.
- I find Adobe Photoshop slow to load. You could consider an Ultrabook, or upgrading one of those Dell laptops to have an SSD.

lux
EDIT: man am I retarded :/. Added my signature twice.

 

[robax91]

Hello, I have experience with Adobe products and I also do design on a laptop. Some people would have you think you need a super expensive pc to handle these programs. Nope.

My laptop is from 2007 and runs these well. Some major advice I would point towards is getting the cheapest option that gives the most bang for the buck. Having said that, integraded graphics is not worth spending just a little less and sure as hell wouldn't be worth more.

Correct me if I am wrong but your budget is £600 GBP? I am not familiar with other currencies but if that is around $950 USD, you can get quite a pc for that hefty sum.

I am not sure if these products can be found wherever you are, but they will at least show you how some products stack up for their respective prices and performances.

This is the cheap option. $550 (£350) Acer Aspire V3-571G-6407. The only thing I would have you do is buy a cheap $70 (£45) 120GB SSD to use for boot and your design programs. Maybe if you feel like upgrading the memory to 8GB, you can for as little as $30-40 (£25). Bringing the total up around $650 (£410) with the right deal searching and comparability checking. The 630M and i5 (2.5 Ghz) will give you a decent laptop that can handle most tasks at a good speed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215662

This is the expensive option. $900 (£565) Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 (59345715). I know for a fact this is a good pc because my friend has one. You should however remove all bloat-ware, especially the Lenovo energy management from it (as it can cause problems by trying to save energy while running programs and lower clock speeds). The same suggestions go for this one, except 6GB should be enough memory. 120 SSD around $70 (£45) (shoot for one with above 300mb read/write). Which brings this up to £610 with the SSD. The 660M on this pc will provide more than enough GPU power to push most applications with GPU acceleration with the exception of heavy video/audio rendering and in some cases massive poly count 3D renders.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834310660

Of course there are other options, but you should shoot for similar specs at least for the prices that I gave you i.e. just because it's a $900 laptop doesn't mean it's really worth $900... some companies add upgrades that you can do yourself for a lot cheaper. It's also best to make a budget and go for a simpler option. If you need more speed, you can just upgrade as you go rather than waiting longer and saving up to buy at a later date (while you could be using it and working for some of that money).

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Also, mind the resolutions of the monitors, some are advertised at 720p and some at 1080p.

 

[ssddx]

luxology was not overstating the difference between laptop gpu and pc gpu.

i use a $700-800 laptop with an i7, 540m gpu, 6-8gb ram and with the hdd upgraded to a 250gb ssd. for comparison my home pc has an i7, gtx470, 6gb ram and 2x 80gb ssd drives + data drives.

i attempted to load a 3d pdf file on the laptop (200-300kb size) which completely failed to display after 5-10 minutes while it displayed in seconds on the older tower system.

while you can run some 3d applications on a laptop you need to push some good hardware which will severely cost you in battery life.

i'm a cad designer who does 3d work for a living. i've had 3d cad on the laptop before and i while usable for basic design work it is not idea for anything complex.

---

i've had good luck with asus and at minimum a ssd upgrade would be a wise idea.

also you may want to look into the quadro mobile gpus as they are more suited towards 3d non gaming applications which might give you some extra performance.