# General Business Category > Technology Forum > [Question] Laptop for design.

## Dragon

HI Peeps

I would like some input from those who are using Matte based laptops. 

I am a designer and currently looking for a laptop.

I have found few but i am rather extremely confused as which to go for.

At the moment these are my options 

Mecer Xpression W970SUW Haswell 4th Generation 

MSI CX702OD (MS-CX702OD-022ZA)

all input will be much appreciated  :Smile:  

regards

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## irneb

They both look reasonable, at least to me. What type of "design" do you do? Most importantly, what program(s) are you using?

For me they're about minimum required, but that's because my main program is Revit (which needs 16GB preferred minimum RAM, high GHz CPU rather than multiple cores, and a decent graphics card). If it was AutoCAD or PhotoShop, then that's overkill. If it's 3dStudio then it's too slow (CPU) with too little RAM.

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## Houses4Rent

generally speaking: I thought the more cores the better as that is the only way things can run in parallel? A faster single processor can only handle one thing at the time.

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## CLIVE-TRIANGLE

I was just looking at this issue because I am in a similar boat. This from Wikipedia 



> The improvement in performance gained by the use of a multi-core processor depends very much on the software algorithms used and their implementation. In particular, possible gains are limited by the fraction of the software that can be run in parallel simultaneously on multiple cores; this effect is described by Amdahl's law. In the best case, so-called embarrassingly parallel problems may realize speedup factors near the number of cores, or even more if the problem is split up enough to fit within each core's cache(s), avoiding use of much slower main system memory. Most applications, however, are not accelerated so much unless programmers invest a prohibitive amount of effort in re-factoring the whole problem.[3] The parallelization of software is a significant ongoing topic of research.

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## adrianh

> HI Peeps
> 
> I would like some input from those who are using Matte based laptops. 
> 
> I am a designer and currently looking for a laptop.
> 
> I have found few but i am rather extremely confused as which to go for.
> 
> At the moment these are my options 
> ...


I run a Acer Travelmate P273 i7 8Gb RAM on Windows 7. The machine is the only decently priced i7 laptop that I could find that has a full keyboard and matte 17 inch screen. Lets see, I have a keyboard, mouse, 3D SpaceExplorer , external hard drive, printer, network and a 27 inch Samsung screen connected to it and it runs like a rocket. I draw on the big screen (and sometimes run a viewport on the laptop screen) but I generally watch movies or farm on the internet on the laptop screen while working on the big screen.

I spend 90% of my day drawing in Rhino so I have 1-6 copies of that going, it is a long story but I always have CorelDraw running as well. IE, Firefox and WinAmp are always open and I often use Lightroom and Corel PhotoPaint in between everything else. ...and the machine just keeps on going.

I reboot the machine maybe two or three times a week just for the  hell of it.

Ok, to cut to the chase, my Acer rocks and I think that it is the perfect machine for CAD.

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## Dragon

Thank you. At the moment i run graphic design software but aim to run 3D software... well it is 8 cores but they msrge when the power demands it  :Smile: 

Im just confused as i have an older gen mecer (the model before the above mentioned.) Bt i need a matte screen now not glossy... i mentioned the laptops above as  they 15k each and cheapest in its range bt also exremely exp in my budget...

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## Dragon

Hi i must say all the acer laptops i checked were glossy screens and used the "u" chipz which is the low power saver chip where they cut the lower...i will google ur laptop n check it out..thank u. 

The mecer and asus has a qm chip which is power hungry n rated over 7000 on the bench mark...where the u chips are rated over 4000 on the bench mark

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## Dragon

I was also thinking of just replacing my current laptop screen with a matte screen.but i cannot find a place where they can do so for me.. by any chance does any one of you know a place that can do so for me? That way i can save some cash by just replacing my glossy screen on this laptop  :Smile:

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## adrianh

I don't think that you will be able to replace the screen with  mate version. Maybe you should try to fin a sheet of matte plastic and paste it over the screen. Go to you local art supply store and see what you can find. What about a A3 matte laminating pouch....

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## Dragon

Thanks adrian. I shall try that . Appreciate the help

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## irneb

> generally speaking: I thought the more cores the better as that is the only way things can run in parallel? A faster single processor can only handle one thing at the time.


True, but you'll find very few software can actually run in parallel (with themselves that is). One which is "embarrassingly parallel" is rendering - i.e. once you've modeled the 3d shape then added all the materials, lights & effects (which is 99% of the actual work), you send it through the rendering process which can use multiple cores (and some of them can even use multiple PCs at once).

Generally for something like 3d modeling (3dStudio, Revit, AutoCAD, SketchUp, Blender are some of what I've used before) the modeling process itself (i.e. that where you actually spend more than 90% of your own time) has no parallelism whatsoever. So for this portion of the actual work, a faster CPU for a single thread is better than a bunch of slower cores. Some of these have attempted to do stuff like real-time display using multiple cores or even the massively multiple cores of the GPU, but they still have very little success in the actual use of the program (i.e. the functions for modifying and creating models).

Though I'd advise something with at a bare minimum 2 cores, preferably 4. Seeing as you tend to make use of more than one program at a time. Thus while one of them has that hour-glass / circle going you can continue with the other.

In general (for Revit) I try to get something with at least 3GHz and around 4 cores. Some mobile chips have a "turbo" feature which "steps up" the Hz from somewhere in the 2GHz to just over 3GHz - so usually that's reasonable (just remember to keep your hands away from the vents else they'll blister).

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## manny17

You can search on the B2C website for more choice...

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## Dragon

Hi Irneb

This info u provided really was helpful. Also with a cuda enables gpu shoukd make 3d rendering easier and more capable. I shall see what else i can find out .. appreciate the info you provided  :Smile:

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## adrianh

What software do you use?

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## Dragon

at the moment General software ..photoshop and corel. only now i am looking at 3D and web software. since i need a matte based display i would rather get a proper power machine one time instead of gettign something weaker and then landing in a problem.

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## irneb

> at the moment General software ..photoshop and corel. only now i am looking at 3D and web software. since i need a matte based display i would rather get a proper power machine one time instead of gettign something weaker and then landing in a problem.


For those 2 the choices you've listed are way beyond required (probably even beyond recommended). 3D is probably going to be your highest demand software - there it depends from program to program (e.g. SketchUp is much more "lightweight" than Revit, but isn't doing the things Revit can do). Web? If you're just going to use a web page WISIWYG program like DreamWeaver - then that's even less power/memory hungry than the 2D editors, so I'd not worry too much about it.

Are you going to run a web server on your Laptop? You sure? Perhaps for development purposes. In which case you might want to up the RAM & hard drive and install a VM (i.e. a 2nd operating system running inside a virtual machine) for the server, that way you can pick-n-choose from many server OSs (including even Linux) and they won't interfere with the working of your "workstation". But I'd definitely recommend a true PC instead of a laptop for production servers, much more capability to extend stuff like disc space.

Whenever someone asks: "What PC/Laptop do I need?" The first step is always: "What do you actually want to do?" After which you need to choose the software which allows you to do those things. And then you look across all the software you'd need - listing their recommended minimums. Choose the hardware so it's on par or better than the highest minimum of your chosen software.

Note with 3D many of them require very good graphics cards. Some even require better than a high-end gaming card. Yet some "state" they require something awesome, but then when you test it you find it's not really the case. E.g. most AutoDesk products recommend Quadro instead of GeForce and FirePro instead of Radeon. But from my own experience if you go with an entry-level Quadro (around the same price as a very high-end GeForce ~R3000) the same priced GeForce will give you more performance - it's only once you get to the truly expensive cards (R10,000 + for the card itself) where there's a noticeable difference between a R3000 GeForce and a R12000 Quadro (same applies to AMD's Radeon vs FirePro's).

And that's usually the reason I steer clear of a Laptop as a graphics workstation. For the sort of 3D work I do it becomes exorbitantly expensive to get a decently performing Laptop in comparison to a PC.

As an example, we have one guy needing to travel to various countries across Africa and he needed a very decent Laptop to compare to his workstation in the office. His workstation cost around R30,000 total, but when we speced a laptop with the same capabilities we ended up with this: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellsto...n&s=bsd&cs=04&. And after configuring it to match the PC it was around $4500 ~ R48,000

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## irneb

> Hi Irneb
> 
> This info u provided really was helpful. Also with a cuda enables gpu should make 3d rendering easier and more capable. I shall see what else i can find out .. appreciate the info you provided


You're welcome!

Anyhow, the cuda idea isn't bad ... but if the models are complex (like mine) the trouble is that the graphics card's RAM is too small to use as a rendering device. And moving data from the PC's RAM back-n-forth to the GPU's actually slows down the process rather than speeds it up - i.e. the massively parallel GPU is mostly waiting for the non-parallel CPU and bridge connections between RAM and GPU. So as long as the entire model can fit into the GPU's RAM then cuda "should" perform very well - i.e. similar to the real-time rendering inside games (which is exactly what it's designed to do).

E.g. the current project I'm doing now (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...#post112853232) used all of 16GB just to open in 3dStudio - then when rendering it used an extra 12GB over that. When opening the working model in Revit it uses 13GB for just up to the podium level (i.e. below ground). Most graphics cards simply don't have that amount of RAM built in.

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## adrianh

Wow....those renders are mind blowing...

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## Dragon

HOLY HELL that really is awesome work, 

well in the near future i do hope to do work that comes atleast 50% close to the type of rendering/ Designs you do  :Smile:  i see what you mean, but for now im going to learn 3D so basics for now (might as well look at a machine)
but i still need a laptop for portability even if its not as good...

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## Justloadit

Looks like a magnificent project, but looking at the Discovery project, I just can not think negatively on the number of claims which are paid way late and rejected, I can now see where all the money is going to, and its not for medical benefits.

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## adrianh

> Looks like a magnificent project, but looking at the Discovery project, I just can not think negatively on the number of claims which are paid way late and rejected, I can now see where all the money is going to, and its not for medical benefits.


Don't get me started on medical aids, banks & insurance companies!

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## irneb

> well in the near future i do hope to do work that comes atleast 50% close to the type of rendering/ Designs you do  i see what you mean, but for now im going to learn 3D so basics for now (might as well look at a machine)
> but i still need a laptop for portability even if its not as good...


Yep, but this is what I'm on about. Doing those renders took all of a weekend (i.e. set 3dStudio to start on Friday and then got the PNGs on Monday) - this is where the parallelism comes in.

But actually making the virtual 3d model and setting all the materials & lights, adjusting levels and exposure, etc. took about a month - and this uses ONLY ONE SINGLE CORE on each change you do! Move a wall ... open Task Manager to see how many cores are actually working ... nope only one at 100%, the rest hovering between 0% and 1%! Thus having multiple cores (as on my current workstation: a dual Xeon X5650 6 Core - i.e. 12 *true* cores, 24 hyper-threaded, at 2.67GHz + 24GB 1600MHz RAM, GeForce GTX 560 Ti - cost around R30k) means squat for most of your actual work. What does help here is a fast Hz and fast+large RAM (i.e. upwards from 3GHz CPU and upwards from 1600MHz 16GB RAM). And this I've found works rather well on my home PC: i7-2700K @ 3.5GHz 4 core, 8 hyper-threaded, 16GB RAM, GeForce 480 (cost around R13k and 2 years older than the Xeon) ... to the point where I can edit stuff there faster (around 2/3rds the time) than on my workstation in the office, but renderings are around 2.5 times as fast in the office.

The "rendering" is only the final step (never more than about 10% of total time spent on the project, more usually around 1%). So the place where multiple cores actually help is infinitesimally small in comparison to where they DON’T. Then when you do those renderings it's also a set-and-forget action (i.e. overnight no need to baby-sit the process), not to mention you can use multiple PC's instead of multiple cores.

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## Dragon

Yes iread up on online rendering as well...was told it takes 2 to3 hours. Let me see what i can find out on that side...

I still need a matte display laptop though for moving around with... a power pc can always come later

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## Dragon

My bad not online. An interior deasign teacher informed me about online rendering

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## irneb

> My bad not online. An interior deasign teacher informed me about online rendering


You can definitely make use of some on-line rendering. Just remember they're not cheap by a long shot. And usually cause extra issues making you less productive. As sample AutoDesk provides what they refer to as Cloud Rendering, when I tested it - it actually took longer to upload the model than it took to render it locally, and then you still needed to wait for the results to be emailed to you. And you needed to upload the model for each single image (frame / scene) you wished to render. But worse was that stuff like custom materials and lighting went all haywire. For small models using mostly built-in additives you might find it a good alternative. Best way would be to test though.




> I still need a matte display laptop though for moving around with... a power pc can always come later


Matte displays are very nice in shaded areas - no reflections. But (be warned) they're worse than useless if any sunlight shines on them (even indirectly). I've found using a laptop while being driven around is impossible with a matte display. But "fortunately" you'd not do much work while running off a battery anyway - especially 3D stuff, it eats batteries for breakfast.

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