But don’t be crazy about your investment because the difference in 1k and 2k systems can easily be as little as 25% speed increase if you are not aware of what you buy. So saving a little can let you upgrade sooner, unless you spend all your extras on beer, so what you save is lost anyway… then spend as much on hardware as you can first and drink less after…
Runner up CPU’s and GPU’s of the best brand are usually just 20% slower (the rtx2080 is just 10% faster than the 2070 and has 27% more cuda cores, so 25% faster in rendering, that is 4.5 minutes instead of 6 minutes, so be sure to know that it matters as it will run your laptop hotter)
ALLWAYS get a great screen, it’s your eyes.
Get one with a silent and good cooling system, it’s your environment and you want to stay sharp for hours on hours, so noise is a big thing to avoid, both for you and your friends.
Have plenty of ram as it will make your system super slow if you run out.
Storage, have lots of fast storage and use a cloud system. You do not want to have loose hdd that fall off tables or usb sticks that you loose. And your system can crash and be stolen, so a cloud doubles as a backup. Dropbox is my favourite so subscribe to ONE cloud instead of having multiple free ones.
-And ORGANIZE your files. Get used to it right away.
Anyone have a Surface Book 3?
The fully spec’d model looks pretty good for a thin 2-in1 laptop.
"Among the more interesting changes made to the Surface Book 3 is the addition of Quadro graphics. While the 13.5-inch Surface Book 3 relies on integrated graphics or a GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU, the 15-inch model comes with either a GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q GPU or a Quadro RTX 3000 Max-Q graphics card. "
Yes, I recently got a Surface Book3. I got it with the Quadro RTX 3000. For the last 20 years, I was definitely in the “need a proper workstation replacement tier laptop” camp, like a Dell Precision laptop. This surface book was the first time in a long time that I moved away from that. So far, it’s great.
And…so much lighter. With that said, once you spec it out, it can get a little pricey. I don’t think I would consider it if I couldn’t have upgraded/maxed out the Video card.
I have not. When you detach the screen, it doesn’t use the Nvidia card, it uses the intel iris display adapter, which is significantly less powerful than the Nvidia. Still handy and useful, but I would not suggest trying to display/interact with a complex rhino model with the screen detached.
So far it’s been great! I do have it connected to a second monitor and it performs very well. With that said…I have not had the occasion to do any heavy rendering. I have been working, successfully, with fairly complex mesh terrain models and it holds up great!
As I noted previously, I was lucky enough to spec mine out with the upgraded video card. Ultimately, that is what cinched the deal for me. If i was unable to upgrade the video card, I don’t think I would have gotten it.
It sounds fantastic. As I’ve said I am looking at getting a laptop, and for some context to answer some questions that I have, I’m a student at an architecture school looking for a laptop that I could possibly use through grad school.
What do you mean by heavy rendering? Like Vray or large files?
I’m looking at the Microsoft website and the highest card they have for the SB3 is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design w/6GB GDDR6 graphics memory. I see that you got one with the Quadro RTX 3000 card. How many GB of VRam is your card? Do you know how it compares to GeForce GTX 1660 previously mentioned?
I’m not very sure how much a different card will affect the use of Rhino on the SB3.
Sorry for the bombardment of questions. I’m still in the learning stages of hardware.
Yes, by “heavy rendering”, I am referring to complex scenes with something like V-Ray.
My machine has 32 GB of physical ram, (which could be considered a little on the light side if one is doing tons of rendering…).
Some comparative information on the cards can be found here. https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-Quadro-RTX-3000-Max-Q-Graphics-Card.424169.0.html#:~:text=The%20Nvidia%20Quadro%20RTX%203000,shader%20count%20and%20memory%20bandwidth.
These are the specs of my card:
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit
DirectX version: 12.0
GPU processor: Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design
Driver version: 451.77
Driver Type: DCH
Direct3D API version: 12
Direct3D feature level: 12_1
CUDA Cores: 1920
Total available graphics memory: 22323 MB
Dedicated video memory: 6144 MB GDDR6
System video memory: 0 MB
Shared system memory: 16179 MB
Based on your experience and what you know, would you recommend a SB3, 16BG RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max-Q w/6GB VRAM, 256 GB SSD for a student to use through grad school? It’s underspeced compared to what you have, but do you think it would still be sufficient to last?
I would increase the physical RAM to 32GB, but it’s getting a bit over my price range.
I was wondering what laptop you ended up going with. Right now, I’m looking to upgrade my laptop to one that will last me through grad school (currently in undergrad architecture in the US). Could you send the specs of your laptop as well? Thanks
Where did you get a surface book 3 with an RTX card? The Microsoft store lists it as coming with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q Design w/6GB GDDR6 graphics memory.
I bought ZBook G3 a few yrs back and that was my best decision, it was pricey I agree though is still a decent machine and does the job on the go like nothing else…
Thin light laptops will likely thermal throttle, most of then limit their processing power to keep the temperature low enough that you would be able to work with then on your lap, I know there is some manufacturers that have desktop cards on their laptops, Avell and Origin PC are two that come to mind (they both sell the same Specs and Design laptops but with different logos), they are fatty, and won’t care for being used on the lap (Once I heard there is two terms for portable computer, laptops, designed to be used on the lap, and notebooks, designed to be carried but used on a desk, IDK if this is a Brazilian thing, but there is that) also, despite working with high temps, working for long with high temps will hurt the longevity of the device, so getting something with build in spacers to have better flow and getting maybe a portable base with a cooler is always a good idea.
Also, if you get something that is top of the list now, it will last well over 3 years, and expect some price fights now that AMD got both Intel and NVidia with their pants down.