Hey guys,
It’s been about 4 years since I’ve played with touchdesigner. I’ve recently been reintroduced to some guys who want to do some projection mapping projects so I’m about to buy a new laptop.
I remember from previous research, I think Nvidia is just better supported? Less buggy? Less work? Whatever - anyway, I’m going with Nvidia 1060/1070 - probably an alienware since my last custom ‘budget’ laptop took a crap (Clevo p150).
I thought, before I make the investment, I would drop a line out there and see what feedback anybody might have on this new GPU series? Like I said, anything in the last 4 years or so I’ve been out of the loop.
Alienware 15 R3 - Nvidia 1060 6GB VRAM run good for anyone? Or any other recommendations?
I’ll be catching up in the forums in the meantime.
nvidia still recommended. 1070 would be my choice in price vs performance.
Make absolutely sure you have a laptop in which you can disable Nvidia Optimus in BIOS.
If not, all your software can only talk directly to the onboard Intel videocard which is crappy&slow. Stuff will probably work, maybe not, maybe slower, alltogether you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you check this beforehand.
If you’re playing video, you’ll end up using HAPQ as a codec, which is decoded on your GPU and so superfast and high resolution and many layers of video are possible, but HAPQ needs a lot of drivespeed.
A lot as in, a single SSD drive (500MB/s) often is a bottleneck. derivative.ca/wiki088/index.php?title=Hap
Get some PCI-E SSD drive (~2500 MB/S) , for instance a Samsung 950 M2 SSD for playing your media.
Last but not least - check the weight… 4kg + powersupply brick is a lot to carry around
I’ve never had any issues with our Origin laptops. The new Eon-15s we got is a really great balance of thin form factor, lightweight, “small” charger comparatively, strong specs, and a decent price. I did an aftermarket hard drive swap as they wouldn’t upgrade the spinning HDD for an SSD for some reason.
yes, I say your videos CAN be bottlenecked by the single SSD, depending on the resolution/framerate and amount of videos your want to play at the same time.
If you read the Hap page I posted above:
A top-of-the-line Samsung 850 SSD can read at ~520MB/sec. So this means if you play want anything more than a single HAPQ 4k video at 60fps , a single SSD will not be fast enough.
Multiple SSD’s in Raid-0 is an option (that’s what I did until 2 years ago) , but nowadays a single PCI-E M.2 SSD drive is cheaper and much faster. Check that your motherboard supports this.
If you replace your previous choice of a 256GB SSD drive with a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 256GB for instance (it’s currently ~190 euro in Europe) that can do 2200Mb/sec, that’s 4 times as fast as a normal SSD drive. So in your case with OS on this drive your laptop will also start up superfast.
Despite your misgivings on the Clevo ( understandable 4 years ago ) myself and almost everyone I know doing touring and constant touch work have been using the newer Sager/Clevos with great success. The 15" 1070s that are out there are pretty amazing for the cost and come with 2 PCI-e slots I believe.
If form/slickness factor is an issue for you than of course Sager isn’t really the brand to go with, but just thought I’d put it out there that they have improved over the last 3-4 years as workhorse touch machines ( maybe not the greatest personal machines…)
I agree with Peter - I have bought a 15" Clevo chassis myself last year, only 2.5 kg, superfast workhorse with M2 SSD drive, Optimus switch in BIOS, cheap and all the best specs available on the market at the time. Has done many shows on the road without any issue - most VJ’s I know use them, from many different suppliers who put their own brand on them.
I could be wrong, but I believe the Origin were all just rebranded Sager’s, and probably still are, although I’m not sure about their newer slim model, but very probably still is. It’s a pretty common thing for these companies to just rebrand and customzie Sager/Clevo and add some features.
I’ll add, if you’re at all worried about performance, get a small form factor desktop instead. We love the Silverstone SG02, although not sure what the new version is called. There’s a lot of nice cases these days that fit a full size GPU and basically just that and a mobo and a few SSDs. You’ll have a lot more headroom, flexibility in terms of making the spec match what you need, and you can upgrade it yearly - all for equal or less cost then a laptop. The only reason you should consider a laptop first is if you work on the road, I think.
To put it in perspective, I’ve gone through 4 workstation laptops in the last 4 years, but my main dev machine in my office is still the SAME desktop I started my TouchDesigner career on because I just refresh parts as needed. My video card doesn’t have enough memory anymore? No problem, just buy the newest card and swap it in, then you have a spare GPU to build another dev machine. Oh, PCIe NVMe drives just came out? Sweet, just buy 1 and put it in. Now you’ve got the fastest storage on the market. New Thunderbolt 3 ports look cool and useful? No problem, bought a new mobo for a few hundred bucks and swapped it in.
No need to buy a whole new system every time something cool and new comes out.
Ugh. I think I’m going to go with an origin, but man its at $2600…
There are other sagers from xotic pc that end up about 18 - 1900, but not near the cpu horsepower, no raid 0 ssd’s, and xotic pc is where I got my last one that all of sudden wouldn’t even POST after 1 year.
This origin laptop will have i7 7700k (4.2ghz), 16gb 2400mhz ram, and gtx1070 (8gb vram)… oh, and 2 256gb pcie m2 ssd’s in raid zero should be a beast… Probably a bit much…
And I want a laptop because I also dj on the side and as a hobby. Plan on using it for that too.
Which one were you looking at? I believe the 15s (which is the slim one you can actually carry around in your bag on the day to day) is a 6gb 1060 and has 1 m2 and 1 spinning drive in it for 2200?
Just ordered a Dell XPS 15 which has a 1050 inside. Not the greatest graphics card, but the machine clocks in at around 4 lbs. It’ll be great for working on touch on the go, and can use an eGPU like the razer core for concerts. Like elburz, my main machine is in a Silverstone case (rvz01) that I can put in a backpack for more demanding vj things, but I’m hoping the xps + eGPU will be enough for most things.
I’ll chime in that I have the xps 13 and I can’t stand their support. Had a ton of issues that I had to fix on my own with forum posts and buying after market hardware like different wifi chips and such. Total PITA. Now that it’s working, it does the job for day to day work, but I still only do TouchDesigner development on my Origin laptop and deploy on racks with Quadro cards in them.
Good to know! Hopefully with the help of /r/dell I’ll learn some tricks to navigating their support.
And yeah, currently running an X1 Carbon and integrated graphics doesn’t really cut it for TouchDesigner. It’s still possible for me to return the Dell - does Origin have < 5lbs options with long battery life and dGPUs?
Origin doesn’t have anything with long battery life. Good specs and long battery life are 2 features that exist at odds with each other. There were attempts like nVidia Optimus that do intelligent switching, but it adds more problems than it solves for most people. I’d recommend using the x1 carbon as your everyday machine and something like Origin 15s as your TouchDesigner machine. That’s my setup with my XPS13 and Origin 15s.
Thanks for the advice! It arrives tomorrow, so I’ll check back in here with battery life, TouchDesigner performance, and whether I return it for an Origin laptop.
