I looked at some. Any thoughts on: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP8D4SM2?tag=pcg-buy-guide-57-45181-20&geniuslink=true&th=1
It was recommended to get a desktop but unfortunately due to life circumstances I cannot own a desktop as I travel a lot.
Also, has anyone hooked up an external graphics card to their laptop for the purpose of Blender animation?
Both CPU and GPU will help. Blender itself can use both. Some YouTube posts say nodes use CPU, and mesh modelling uses GPU. So they beefier your laptop the better. VRAM is important for rendering textures. If you do not have enough, the operating system (O.S.) slows down, because the operating system is forced to swap textures from VRAM to O.S. memory. That is an extra operation. Recommended is 32GB system memory and 12GB or more VRAM.
Small projects do not require a lot of VRAM. depends on you. to give you an idea about VRAM: https://blenderartists.org/t/got-a-quick-question-on-textures-and-video-ram/1539799
When you are close to the 3D object, you need 2 or 4K textures, like rock climbing. If the 3D object is far away, or X meters away, you might not notice the difference. then 0.5K 1k textures are good enough. If you use binoculars ingame, then it has to change again. far becomes close again. How to solve?
GPU RTX 4090 would be best, Toms hardware GPU hierarchy has a list of frames per second for every GPU (desktop), but it does show the fps differences between models. That gives you a general idea, if it is enough for you.
Price difference between a laptop with RTX 4060 and 4080, is not much. You will be happy if you went for a RTX4080 minimal. It just is the sweet spot. Pricewise and performance.
Please buy the system from a respected shop. I had 2 laptops with blue screen problems. Blue screen of death they call it. The operating system just gets some error and crashes. It happens once per few days. But it tells something, the laptop is not stable. power fluctuations, overheat problem, memory with ESD errors.
ESD is electronic static discharge, the same electricity shock you receive if you touch someone who has a different bodily voltage. Then a current slows quickly from body to body, that is what you feel if you get a sudden shock. that is the reason electronics get damaged. It works, but has become unrealiable, due to a tiny damage in the electronics.
13 and 14th generation intel have a cpu burn problem! if you buy second hand it might happen that it is already damaged. Not a joke. I am serious.
If you buy these systems, really test these laptops out, do a 3D benchmark test for a long time, see if it can keep running without problems. There are free programs for that.
Let it run for example 1 day. continuously. In IT that is called a "burn in" test.
external GPU is extra overhead, if you want to go for this route, then laptop is useless. the amount of hardware to drag along is the same as a desktop. Really.
Desktop has everything inside a neat case, very sturdy, laptop with external gp and 2 power supplies is just too bulky and even more difficult to move around.
besides. a desktop has 50% more gpu power for the same gpu model compared to laptop. laptop has a benefit: it can use 1/3 of the power of an desktop, and only perform 50% less. that is the positive side of a laptop too.
I googled some:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/rtx-4080-laptop/s?k=rtx+4080+laptop
Happy laptop hunting. (hope I don't talk too much now. Excuse me.)
Hi Kimberly,
I just did a small Render test and the same scene that took about 16 seconds on my desktop with RTX4090, took about 4 minutes and 40 seconds on my Laptop with RTX4090.
Maybe I somehow got a 'broken' Laptop, but I really wouldn't expect too much. And as LLittlesheep mentions, make sure you somehow test any Laptop you buy.
What are great laptops? Hmm, how about a MSI raider A18? Model A18 HX a7V, it has a AMD 7 series with lots of 3D cache and a RTX4090. CPU 3D cahse helps in some cases with speed. Not always good to have best CPU. Not always cost effective. or a MSI titan with RTX4090. but titan is almost the same, but much bigger, has more SSD memory slots. I have an MSI Raider A18, very stable gaming laptop. Never bought an MSI high end laptop yet. This is my first. Has a low power GPU for desktop usage like internet, typing, etc, if needed, it will switch to RTX4090 to do some graphics processing.
Other brands an models I have no experience with. I just can praise what I used for months now. Maybe others can commend which brans and models they have a good experience with.
Hello Kimberly,
Do you mind sharing the specs of your laptop? that gives us an idea where you are now. some of the art done by CG cookie employee were much older hardware than we can buy now ^^. Even then they managed. So our advice is too be taken with a grain of salt. Any GPU , even an older 3080 can handle the job.
Low power GPU laptop can still render as Martin of CG cookie mentioned, the render time just increases.
There are ways to render smart, render in PNG, and in parts. You can actually choose which parts to render as an PNG, and you can even tell Blender to take a break and continue later. Because you rendered frame 1 till 100, so you know you have to start rendering from 101.
Or, render in parts, then join them later.
Oh, there are free online render farms by the way: https://www.foxrenderfarm.com/share/best-and-free-blender-render-farm/
I do not have experience with them, but if it is not a company render, sending to a render farm cannot do any harm. If it is a future project of your, your own Intellectual property, I am not sure. They say they will not use your IP, but in the shadows it is been fed to A.I. Who knows. No one is checking the A.I.
ah. it is a https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Inspiron-G7-7500-2-6-5-0Ghz/dp/B08QDQXVXL.
Toms hardware (desktop) it can do XX frames compared to best GPU at the moment, you need at least 3 tiers higher:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388-2.html
but a 3060/3080 is very old. Not worth it, unless you buy it really cheap.
3060 is just a minor jump in frames per second. 3080 or above will do nicely.
But, this might be interesting:
mind you, I have not own one before. Do not know the build quality.
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834156720
4080 refurbished! good price.
have a look at all of their laptops Edit:
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100157995%20601411683%20601411674%20600337010&Submit=Property
changed the search parameters with all RTX4060 and RTX 4070. and 32 GB
some laptop have text: MGP 75 Watt, that means the GPU is limited top 75 watt, please do not buy these. Same GPU model have 2 versions usaually, a 75 watt and the other 150 watt. 150 watt have better cooling, so they can pull more power and have an overdrive to 175 watt sometimes.
The most missed spec of a laptop is it's bus speed. No matter how fast your CPU, GPU, and RAM is they will always be limited by the speed the data transfer between those components and that is the Bus Speed. This is usually slower than a tower to slow down all components. Why? You may ask. To reduce heat.
Hi Littlesheep,
I will take note of that. Thank you so much for the thorough insight on this matter. Really really appreciate that! :D
one last thing, if you do buy an 13th or 14th generation intel, please ask someone to update the bios for you. It is to prevent the cpu from getting too high voltages. It bakes the CPU to medium rare. This was the reason I went for a laptop with AMD ryzen series 7.
Above is also the reason you should run a heavy benchmark to stress the CPU and GPU. If there is anything, it will show under stress, just like humans. ^^
Hey Littlesheep,
As much as I wanted to run tests on the laptop I was purchasing, I was unable to due to admin privileges and given I don't really have many computer-based stores around here, I did end up purchasing an MSI Stealth 16 Al Studio A1V 16'' 165 Hz Gaming Laptop. VRAM capacity is 12GB with graphics card RTX 4070. I believe it is a quadcore processor with 32GB of RAM. It was the best offer I can find for only $1500 plus tax near me.
:D Just to update.. I'm pretty excited and I'll see how this will affect my animation workflow when using it.
Have fun ^^, with your nice laptop.
last last, last thing =p:
If you use Blender, it has 1 thing you should know: Fake user. Anything not explicitly flagged by you , that you wish to keep it through closing of the project file. If you don not press the small shield icon, the texture, animation, etc will have a zero in front of it, meaning blender will throw that data away, without telling you.
I learned that the hard way, so saving in Blender is not 100% saving.
Had just imported an character rig with 150 animations onto my trial character, then done, saved it, next morning opened it, just 1 animation in the list: T-pose.
^^ deep human inhale/exhale no problem, redo character rigging. (auto-rig pro, with an 150 animation addon package)
