Hi everyone

I am seriously thinking of moving from my desktop to a laptop, but am just wondering what you all think is the most important thing to look for in one, right now I am thinking about something with a decent i7, 16Gb Ram and a 2Gb graphics card.  Anyone use a system like this and how do they perform with poser?

I did try my existing laptop a macbook i5 with 16Gb Ram but only a 256 graphics card and the performance was awful to the point of being unusable, I am assuming this was because of the crappy graphics cards Apple crowbar into their macbooks.

Anyway if anyone has a recommendation for a Laptop that will eat poser for breakfast or any tips on picking one shout out.

Many thanks

Its for some pretty serious poser work, high res rextures, multipule figures and animation... so it really needs to be able to do everything. :)

What follows is my own opinion, clearly labelled. I have, however, been in computing for over 30 years, and have built countless machines both for personal use, friends, and clients.

It depends on what you do in Poser. If the specs of the laptop do not equal or exceed those of the current computer, you will take a performance hit. Also note, unless all you render is "naked Vicki in a temple" you need AT LEAST 8 gigs of RAM and preferably 16 or more. You're not going to find that in a laptop without paying BIG bucks. Typically, one buys a laptop for portability. That is why they were made. Performance is best served (from a cost-effective standpoint) by a desktop. 

Others will have other opinions. Your mileage may vary.

The main things IMO are 8gb RAM minimum (at least expandable), and look for a good graphics card embedded with a lot of RAM as well (especially if you are aiming for unbiased render engines like Octane, Lux or Cycles, all of which can be exported from Poser). EDIT:...and an i3 or better.

If your not going to use a Monitor with it for the most part, you may need a bigger screen (17 in), and sacrifice (ease of) portability.

There are typically limited upgrade options once purchased, so you wants to go nice up front.

(...for example, you can get a Toshiba Satellite, i3, 8gb ram, 2gb Radeon 7670, for about $600...its a decent machine.  i5/12gb for $800.  i7/16gb for $1K)

I've been using laptops for a number of years now, 5 or so. There are 2 huge problems with them..... one is heat! When rendering your laptop will run very hot and I mean very hot and unlike a desktop, you cannot add a better fan or so. When rendering, my new i5 will get 95c. My previous one, a dell core2duo ran so hot when having it on my lap, it would shut down. Then new i5 hasn't done that yet, but it's running close to it's max heat when rendering. As you can image doing that for long time will decrease the lifespan of the cpu. After all these years I've finally made the decision to get a desktop for rendering again. It's an i7 and it will not get over 65c due to a much better fan and room for the air to flow.

Problem 2 is the cpu..... whatever laptop cpu you will buy, it's always a clocked down version of the desktop one. My latest laptop did cost just over €600, fastest mobile i5 and 6Gb of Ram (enough for what I do). If you buy the equivalent i5 desktop version (3470), it will be at least twice as fast and costs me €400. The one I bought, i7 (3770) with 8Gb or Ram, the rest same specs as the laptop, did cost €500. It's a lot cooler and is 4-5 times as fast as the laptop.

Do I use the laptop still? Yes, all the time, I'm working on it, but I don't render on it. Everything I need to render I do sent to the desktop. That way I can keep on working on the laptop, don't stress that much anymore and my projects are rendered so much faster.

A little comparing..... I was working on illustrations for a book, a combined Poser - Vue project with the images rendered in Vue on print quality. I started out on the laptop with the first few images, rendering times 3-6 hours per image. Realised that it would take me months to render all of them, locking up my laptop completely. Got the i7.... rendering times same images, 30 mins-1 hour per image. Since then I'm only working on the laptop and rendering on the desktop.

Please do realize that getting a mobile i3 or i5 will get you a relative slow machine. If you use a lot of reflections, the i3 will be very slow and the i5 will manage pretty well, but if you're planning on using a lot of transparency, the i3 will be very bad at it and the i5 very slow. They just don't handle that stuff well. The mobile i3 wasn't made for rendering and 3D stuff at well and the mobile i5 can handle it, but it isn't ideal at all. If you go for a laptop, you're going to want an i7 for sure, but compared to a laptop, it still will be slow. Oh and watch out for the newest low consumption modile cpu's..... those are very bad for 3D work, toned down a lot and not made for rendering and such.

I have an MSI GT70 with an i7-3610QM @ 2.3 GHz, 12gb RAM and a geforce 660M with 3Gb RAM, and I'm very happy with it. What I really like for rendering is the turbo fan button, you can turn the fan on high for rendering and don't have any concerns with the system overheating (good cooling is really important for rendering on laptops). The 3Gb graphics card is great as well.

The only thing I don't like about it is the dual graphics card set up. It has an imbeded intel 4000 graphics card, and the 670M, and uses both. In most situations this is fine, but for GPU rendering with Lux it causes some system stbility issues. It works, you just can't use anything that need OpenGL when using GPU rendering (plus you get a temporary dirver crash, but not a big issue).

I've used laptops more than desktops for 3D. You won't get the same performance as if you were to spend the same amount on a desktop, but for me, the added convinience of being able to work virtually anywhere is well worth the trade off in potential performance. The turbo fan on the MSI has been great!!! I've run renders for over 24 hours, and don't have to worry about overheating.

Turbo Fan.... I wish I had that! Cool feature. When I choose my laptop last year, I didn't see any with that feature on it. Mine has a automatic fan and will run full power when rendering, but it still isn't enough for cooling the cpu, even though HP advertised mine as being for 3D work and rendering.

As for dual gpu, I've got that as well, but switched the intel one off, i think through the bios of through the energy control settings. Now it only uses the high power graphics card and the intel one is always off.

As you confirm, you still loose out, the desktop cpu would run roughly a Ghz faster and that's a lot for a cpu.

Quote - Turbo Fan.... I wish I had that! Cool feature. When I choose my laptop last year, I didn't see any with that feature on it. Mine has a automatic fan and will run full power when rendering, but it still isn't enough for cooling the cpu, even though HP advertised mine as being for 3D work and rendering.

As for dual gpu, I've got that as well, but switched the intel one off, i think through the bios of through the energy control settings. Now it only uses the high power graphics card and the intel one is always off.

As you confirm, you still loose out, the desktop cpu would run roughly a Ghz faster and that's a lot for a cpu.

The turbo fan is really great .... noisy ..... but worth it! It also has a turbo mode, which gives a bit of a performance boost too. On the model I have, there isn't the option to disable the integrated GPU in the bios. I can force the use of the nvidia card through the nvidia control panel, but that can be a bit hit or miss, depending on how the graphics calls are made to the system. I haven't checked lately - maybe there is a bios upgrade that will allow turning of the integrated video now.

After rendering a while (20-30 min.) the exhaust vents get quite warm, almost hot, but not hot like my other laptops have gotten, and overall the laptop stays quite cool. It's actually cooler while rendering than my last one was under normal use.

I run Poser on my Lenovo i5 system and just the HD3000 graphics - it works "acceptably" with the following caveats:

• The 15.6 inch screen makes reading menus etc. difficult

• I have a three-fan laptop coooer under it, otherwise like has been said the sucker will try to heat the room

• It's maxed out at 8GB, I recommend something more expandable

• Use an external mouse, otherwise yu're going to live in the penthouse of Hotel 
  Frustration (trackpads and 3D are a bad combination) 

Best of luck!

I think everyone develops habits and has their own style of working. I personally cant imagine trying to do serious work on a laptop. I prefer working at a big desk where I can spread out notes and reference materials, and mouse and pen tablet. The bigger the monitor the better, so you can see what your doing. I run dual monitors so that I can place reference materials on one and work on the other. When working I typically have Poser, ZBrush, Photoshop and Carrera all running at the same time working back and forth between them. I need screen real estate to move windows around and keep eveything straight. I'm no expert in computers but it has been my experience through the years that laptops always seem to have more "issues" than desktops. To me working on a laptop is like working with one hand tied behind my back and looking through a tunnel at the work.

My father was an old school carpenter and I can remember from the time I was a child he would say If you going to do a job, use the right tools! I think his advice is still relevant!

It's very personal and what you're used too. If you're used to a 19+ inch screen then a laptop is nothing for you. But I'm not used to that, so a 15.6 inch is more then enough for me. I can work much faster on my laptop then on a desktop. Of course, I don't use the touchpad, but use trackball and a tablet for input. Due to a muscle disorder, I cannot sit too long, so a desktop is a no go for me. With a laptop I can stand, sit, lie down and even walk if need to. I can keep on working and I'm not restricted to one place either. I can sit at the kitchen table, lie on the couch or even in bed and keep on working.

For notes, I use my smartphone or tablet and as for problems, been using laptops for many years now and never re-installed the os or had any problems. Having said that neither have I had much problems with desktops in the past. It all depends on what you do with it. My oldest laptop compaq is more then 12 years old now, runs windows 2000 and is still running, never had a problem with it at all.... it's an army issued one, drop it, throw it, even shoot at it and the thing will keep on going. The other one is a 5 year old Dell, WinXP has run all the time without a problem, except for the battery, it's as good as dead. The new a HP is running win7 and it's going for a year now, running smooth and great.

Best laptop for rendering/number crunching?

Eurocom Panther 5, with an 8 core Xeon CPU (150 watt E5-2687W 3.1 ghtz base, 3.8 turbo)

Don't plan on the battery lasting long....

It will run circles around any I7. Even overclocked I7's....

They are expensive, portable workstations.... Very expensive.....

For the rest of us, we have to settle on more affordable alternatives...

HP offers the Elitebook series I7 notebooks that run at the same speeds as desktops.

XIcomputer.com builds some screamers for decent prices as well.

Rendering either comes down to the number of cores and the speed they run at, or the power of the GPU if a GPU based render engine is used.

I've had three laptops. Each time I purchased one it was almost the same CPU and RAM as my Desktop. Every scene the Desktop did effortlessly the Laptop stuttered, froze and just couldn't work with. From what I've gathered over the years it has to do with the difference between Desktop and Laptop CPU (processors). It seems the Laptop processors are seriously hampered. I think what it comes down to is the Laptops' Bus spead. It's the difference of how much data is grabbed at a time to process. Basic comparison, if the Desktop PC was serving the data to and from its' processor through a garden hose the the Laptop would be serving it to through a straw. Even if the processors are the same speed the Desktop wins.

Like aeilkema said, it's really a matter of personal preference and style. At work, I have 2 desktops and 1 laptop running with 2 screens each. At home I prefer to sit in a recliner in the living room with my wife/family while I relax doing 3D, rather than being stuck alone at a desk in another room.

This discussion got me to thinking, so I looked through my gallery, and out of the 41 images I've posted here, all but 4 have been set up and rendered on a laptop. I've really never had any more problems or instabilities with a laptop than with a desktop, but I've always tried to get good quality, well designed systems. As I recall, the longest render was 79 hours, on a dual core Gateway gamers rig. I usually set the laptop on my homemade laptop "desk" on the floor while it's rendering and I'm doing something else (cooler air near the floor).

I've found that gaming laptops often provide the best bang for the buck with "hobby" 3D. I have a Dell "workstation" laptop at work, but for the extra $$$ it really doesn't provide much over an equivalant gaming laptop, since Poser, Carrara, and DS really don't take advantage of the features of a workstation/pro class video card. Due to the heavy sustained load that gamers place on a laptop, and the need for better graphics cards and more RAM, they do quite well. I only upgraded to my new laptop to get more RAM, after 5 years my Gateway FX was (is) still running very well.

If I had to work only on a desktop at home, I would not spend much time on the computer at all. I really prefer the freedom I get with a laptop.

I run P2012 Pro on an i5 with 8 gig, switchable Intel and Radeon graphics chipsets and have no issues. Heat could be somewhat of a problem, but I normally run it on a fan-equipped laptop stand and have no issues whatsoever. (I also don't get many heating problems from certain games that are processor intensive. But, I keep an eye out for it, just the same.)

The processor is most important, next comes the RAM. The vid-card is only used for rendering the preview window, unless you've got a CUDA/whatever-capable card you're rendering with. The vid card won't get stressed unless you're loading up a lot of large textures in the preview pane.

I use a separate mouse, keyboard and monitor, though. So, you'll have to take that sort of expense into account.

I use an i7 MacBook Pro with 8Gb Ram and run P7 in it.

The problem is that P7 does not address all the power functions in the new OS. I suggest going to P9 or PPro newest iteration to address the extra power configurations in the modern Apple systems.

If you don't you will crash.

Lowering some of the render functions in Poser helps me a lot too. You'd be surprised what you can get away with using in a pinch.

I render 1 to 2 low res images to test render the piece in the first launch and to do the final hi res render (300 dpi at 8x10 inches) I relaunce clean or open the file and do a full size render. Usually works fine. Sometimes I will have to reboot the OS if the drive and ram is fragmented and all crash probles disappear.

as far as rendering HOT. When I am at home I render with the AC Power cord attached. If you can use that instead of the battery. It saves battery use for when you really need it to move around and it does run way cooler. I also got the AVIQ angle stand for the laptop which lifts it at a comfortable angle and allows it to run a bit cooler. Any air you can get beneath the base of the computer allowing air flow will help.