Hi, I´m thinking about buying a new 17" Laptop. Had an Dell M6700 before, and was quite happy with it.
Does a 4k UHD Display make sense on a 17" screen with Rhino? Or better stay with FHD?
I have a 15" 4K thinkpad and regret going for the 4k. It drains the battery quicker and takes more gpu power IMO. Therefore i have switched the resolution to 1920x1080 and can’t really tell the difference visually but it runs faster and for longer. Waste of money on a 15" not sure about 17".
I like a 3K screen on my 15," and for Rhino. If I were buying a 17" I would go with a 4k screen. I agree that for 15" 4k is a little much–mostly because Window’s scaling is meh.
Generally drawing more pixels does take more power. Personally, I like to see what I am doing. I like that lines may be thickened in Rhino. I yearn for a larger screen while doing grasshopper because I usually have both of the windows opened.
IMHO, it’s really difficult to find a notebook-computer for battery use for doing CAD/Design. They only put so much lithium in because of airline regulations, so the experience is throttled on battery power, on many notebooks.
As a reoccurring Lenovo customer, I find it disappointing that quad-cores have disappeared from their mobile-workstation lineup, because a small and fast processor–coupled with a good sized GPU works well for reverse-engineering–even when working outdoors, though mostly, I use my notebook remotely but plugged in, soothing my caffeine–er habit at my local coffee shop.
Thanks Brenda,
do you scale or use 100% screen resolution?
I usually don´t use the laptop unplugged. The M6700 slowed down a lot unplugged. Since some here in the forum recommended a minimum screen of 43" when working at 4k I was afraid that you have to scale, which propably does not make much sense. Would still love to hear from somebody who maybe has a Dell 7710 / 7740 with 4k screen…
You are welcome. I have the scaling set to 175%. I suspect that it depends on the program, the person, and the eyes.
To make things more complicated… You can lower the antialisaing on a high resolution monitor and recover performance, or raise it on a low-resolution monitor to take a performance hit.
Can you get some time on various computers with the Rhino demo?
It might let you find what best works for you.
I don’t think that I can find a shop where I can try a RH demo on a 4k 17" laptop in my area… If you scale 175% is that not more or less the same as using FHD, but with more power consumption? I’m often working on bigger models like Facades or 100m+ ships… (production cnc data, not renderings)
At home I would use a bigger 4k screen for serious work… Eyes are of course not as good anymore as in 1996 when I used RH for the first time…
I upgraded recently from a 7730 4K to a 7740 4K. The screen is even nicer than before, shading on renderings looks better, the color range seems about the same but the contrast seems higher.
I think the important thing is not seeing pixels in small details like reading text/graphics/fonts, regardless of the scaling you choose (I run it at 150% on the 17” screen), 4K helps you seeing a ‘retina’ smooth screen regardless of your scaling.
Also the jump down from 4K to 1080p is brutal. 1920x1080 only makes sense for a phone these days. Even if you run your screen at 150% scaling and you are losing 1/3 of your pixels in a 4k display you would have to have a 2557 x 1440 pixels display to show the same amount of pixels than a 4K ((3840 x 2160) x 2/3) scaled up. And even when you are not taking ‘full advantage’ of all the usable pixels, the upsampling to 4K is helping you with decent smoothing. 4K is just right between a 15” and a 27” display and scaling should be adapted based on your screen size, type of work, proximity to display and eye-sight. I think 4K any larger than 27” also looks terrible, unless you are watching TV and are sitting across the room.
I hope this helps,
Gustavo
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Thanks a lot, great help!
While unable to afford one for now, I’m totally smitten by the MSI P75 894 an under 5 lb. laptop with an octa core I9 processor, Nvida RTX 2070 max Q and room for three drives and up to 64 gigs of ram. From reports I’ve read and videos I’ve seen this particular setup will run roughly $3K. Fortunately it’s good looking as well as it is from the MSI “Creators” series that tones down the damnable gaming googas and multi-colored keyboard back lighting. My own personal criteriea for a laptop includes a weight of less than five pounds and this model just sneaks in at 4.96 lbs! And the display screen is 3840x2160 and received excellent reviews for color balance and the like. I want one for sure!
HD=1920x1080 resolution is perfect for 15,6 inch laptop. 4K=UHD= 3840x2160 is overkill on 15,6 inch laptop - you can barely see the pixels if you look at the LCD through a magnifying glass. If you want to do CAD work on 15,6 inch 4K laptop, you have to hold mouse in one and and magnifying glass in the other hand. In other words, you must have 4K monitor if you want to do CAD work. By the way, we already had debate about 4k monitors: Should I get a 4k monitor?
Yup. That the whole point.
Sounds like we all agree on the technical difference. And now it’s a matter of option of what each of us finds acceptable/unacceptable.
Yes, but it is about 17" Laptops. In the former discussion some said that 27" should be the minimum for 4k, others 40". Therefore I’m interested in some real world experience of 4k 17" laptop users…
I have a HP zbook g3 with 4k and I love it.
There’s been a little lag with McNeel and plugin companies getting up to speed on design UX that isn’t glitch on 4k screens, but they’re almost perfect now.
You’ll end up spending some time perfecting view settings, but for me it was worth it.
I’m debating going back to a bootcamped mac now that they have a 16” and it can go up to 64gb ram, but I probably will end up going for the top of the line HP next time I upgrade
Not really true. Just adjust a few settings and no magnifying glass is required. McNeel updated command icon size options in Rhino 6.
The benefits are a wider range of line weights that don’t look clunky, and just plain better display. Also lets you set up WYSIWYG high quality display for technical, pen and artistic view modes, which I find very handy for shop drawings.