Whats a good Laptop for Digital Painting and CG Work?

[ShinJay]

I've been looking for a good Laptop for about 3 weeks now and i cant seem to come to terms on getting one. The price range im going for is 1,000-1,500. Ive been looking at various brands and they all seem good, but im not much of a computer guy so all the technical computer cpu and video cards and all that are a blur to me.

So i decided to ask CA for a little help on Laptops on deciding what brand is reliable and what to look for in a Laptop, like the cpu and and video card and all that stuff. So if you guys and gals can enlighten me please do.

Thanks,
Jay Her

[Dile_]

you should search google or something
for TABLETPC .. its built in "tablet" in them!

[rogfa]

I just bought one a couple weeks ago. My first laptop. Used primarily for Painter and PhotoShop and a little Zbrush. I went with a Compaq 14" AMD Turion with 1Gb of memory and an ATI Video card with shared memory. It was $1000 Canadian.

It's pretty portable and that was one of the factors for me. But does get a little warm after a few hours of use. The battery life is terrible if you're doing something more than surfing or checking email. I looked at a tablet PC but they are pretty expensive for just basic hardware. I got a lot more hardware for about half the price of a tablet pc. But tablet pcs are a lot of fun to use.

There are a couple things you should look for.

Processor: Intel Centrino Duo Core or AMD Turion, I'd stay away from Celeron or Sempron processors. They are missing L2 cache memory and other features that are above my knowledge.

Memory: This is probably the most important part and it factors in with the video card too. 512Mb is pretty low if the memory has to be shared with the video card. Meaning the video card doesn't have its own dedicated memory and shares the memory with the computer. If you think about it. Just for Windows XP to run it's using about 150Mb of memory. Just to exist. Then the video card is using 64Mb or 128Mb. The left over memory is used for your programs. So, I wouldn't get anything lower than 1Gb of memory. Also a lot of laptops advertise as their capacity is 2Gb but most of the time all the RAM slots are filled so you are forced to remove memory to add memory. In the end it pays to get the configuration you want.

Video Card: Laptop video cards can have shared memory or dedicated memory. A laptop with dedicated memory is more expensive. But can allow you to play more intensive games. I wasn't too interested in that but I was interested in using some 3D apps like ZBrush and Silo. They both work really well on my compaq. I can't get to really high subdivisions in Zbrush but for basic sculpting it's fine.

I hope this is useful for you.

[bumskee]

I been looking at tablet PCs myself. Someone at work recently purchased one actually, like yesterday. Toshiba m4, 14", 2.0ghz nvidia 6600 and of course the best bit, the tablet. I had few scribbles with it, I must admit it is a little less responsive than intous. These tablet pcs have 256 levels, which is half that of grapphire. But the pressure I couldn't really tell, but more the slower response with the cursor. I read a bit into it and it's something that can not be avoided, it's not jumpy or anything but just a little slow especially if you go for a quick stroke. Having said that, I am going to purchase one myself, Toshiba m200, smaller with 12", lighter 2kg, but with crap video card, fx5200 and no optical drive. But then again I already have a 17" laptop so.. just need something to take out and paint.

Just to follow up on rogfa's comments on laptops. you should definitely keep away from celeron or sempron if you want a bit of grunt, most of the budget ones will comes with them. See if you can grab the dual core ones, I am pretty sure AMD will bring theirs out shortly (mid 2006, which will be 64bit! and dual core but maybe more power otherwise only dual core solution is Intel but 32bit for the moment), not sure if it's out there yet. But otherwise, AMD Turion or Dothan (centrino/sonoma). They are sort of like the last generation of CPUs. Dothan (PM) clocked at 1.7ghz will be about 3.0ghz pentium speed, since the architecture is different. So don't be fooled by the frequency, it means zip all.

Video card is one of the most important components that you will most likely not be able to upgrade ever. So pick it wisely, anything integrated is crap! like shared, whever you see a "ATI" or "Nvidia" in specs means that it has a separate card installed. Of course there's a wide variety of model names from budget to pretty high specced ones. For your budget though, ati x600, x700, nvidia 6600 should be reachable. there's rams for vid cards but you can do a bit more research once you figure out the model for the card first. some budget cards are x300, 6200. still better than integrated ones.

RAM, is cheap.. like sodimm ddr2 for most centrino system is like $110 AUD, like $80 USD for a 1gb stick. So you can always shove in more.. remember you have two slots though. Some rams are more expensive, like the ones used in toshiba m200, depending on the platform.

screen!! is important. there's only a handful of choices here,
"Standard" Screens

Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio

* XGA / 1024x768 / 4:3
* SXGA / 1280x1024 / 5:4*
* SXGA+ / 1400x1050 / 4:3
* UXGA / 1600x1200 / 4:3

"Widescreen" Screens

Abbreviation / Resolution / Aspect Ratio

* WXGA / 1280x768 / 5:3**
* WXGA / 1280x800 / 8:5 (16:10)***
* WXGA+ / 1440x900 / 8:5 (16:10)***
* WSXGA+ / 1680x1050 / 8:5 (16:10)***
* WUXGA / 1920x1200 / 8:5 (16:10)***

that's your options, obviously the more letter you have more costly they are.

HDD! SATA is better but i don't think it matter much. higher rpm mean better too, like 7200rpm but eats more power..blah blah 5400rpm will be most adequate and much better than 4200rpm.

check.. http://forum.notebookreview.com/index.php
there's some guides there for what to look out and stuff. But for artist I think one of those tablet PCs does look very tempting.

[Akali_singh]

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i too need at laptop that wont heat up so fast when using painter or photoshop...does anyone know which laptops the pros were using at MB?




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