BADASS laptop for Adobe CS5.5... PC or Mac?

Jaime Valles

Jaime Valles

Veteran
Hello, all. I realize this will be a hot-button topic, akin to asking about religious beliefs or politics, but I need guidance. My current desktop needs to be retired, and I'm looking at getting a laptop for doing serious video editing and graphic design on the road with Adobe CS5.5 (and CS6 when it comes out). Now, I've been a Mac user for the past 10 years, and I love OSX. I'm thinking a 17" MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt-RAID would do the trick. Almost no viruses, very lightweight for the size, stable and crash-free (for the most part). But then there are some Windows laptop workstations that I see have 2 or even 3 internal hard-drives and I get curious about the "other side."

So, I ask you all... Without resorting to bashing each other, I'd like to have a discussion of the pros and cons of going with Windows or OSX for video editing on a badass laptop. I'm not interested in FCPX, iMacs, DIY Windows desktops, or Hackintosh machines. I want to determine if I'm better off with a 17" MacBook Pro or with some Windows laptop for heavy video editing, After Effects and Photoshop. I want a big screen with at least 1920x1080 resolution. Weight is not really an issue. My budget is $4000. If you recommend Windows, please post links to where I could see the rig you're thinking about.

Discuss. :thumbsup:
 
I should add that I already have a dual-monitor setup with two 21" 1080p DVI monitors. I'd like to be able to connect those monitors to this new laptop somehow.
 
I assume if you are using Premiere Pro (CS5 and higher), you would want a laptop with either a Geforce GT 540M (Fermi) or GT 640M (Kepler) or higher, or a Mobile Quadro 1000 and up for Mercury Playback Engine GPU acceleration There are rumors that Premiere CS6 coming out in a few months will have support for AMD Radeon GPUs. And new laptops (and desktops) in May, June, and onwards will have the latest Ivy Bridge CPUs.

There are a couple of good 15.6" and 17" laptops that will have those type of mobile Geforce / Quadros, some even have 4 memory sockets to house 32GB (4 x 8GB) of ram, and some even have two hard drive bays (or business laptops where you can swap the mobile optical disc drive for another hard drive bay)

Gaming laptops and Business laptops - 15.6" with Geforce GTX 560m or new GTX 660m or Quadro 1000/2000 GPUs -- all have four ram sockets for 32GB support (Premiere / After Effects / Photoshop), quad core mobile Sandy Bridge (Core i7 2630QM and higher quad core) or new mobile Ivy Bridge .

Asus G53 series (or G54 for Ivy Bridge)
MSI GT683 series (not sure what Ivy Bridge models will be named)
Lenovo Thinkpad W520
HP Elitebook 8460W
Dell Precision m4600
Saber NP9130 (or Clevo P151 series)

17" laptops and higher
Asus G74xxx
MSI GT780xxx
HP Elitebook 8640w
Dell Precision M6600

14" laptop (Core i7 sandy bridge quad core or Ivy Bridge quad core plus Geforce GT 550m/ or 640M and higher)
Lenovo Ideapad y470 (Sandy Bridge), y480 (Ivy Bridge)
 
Just my opinion ...but if weight is not an issue and considering you will already be dragging around a two 21" monitor setup...I would go for a desktop box.

Better bang for buck and far more flexible and configurable (hardware component wise). Especially if you went the non MAC route.

BTW- What laptops did you find that had 2 or 3 HDDs?

Also - can one even utilise three monitors from a laptop (and Premiere)?
 
If you have a notebook that has a dedicated AMD/ATI video card and has a VGA/DVI port & HDMI, then you should be able to take advantage of the eyfinity multi-display feature.

Also there are several 17" models of notebooks that take two HDDs, but three is more rare. The one I know that has a 3 HDD option is made by Sager.

But I agree with Shooter; If you're already lugging around two monitors, then a desktop shouldn't be a problem, unless you're not always planning on having them around I suppose.


Here are some that have multiple drive options. They also have multiple display outputs, but note that it depends on the dedicated GPU as to whether or not they can all be used simultaneously. The only one I know for sure does is the HP Envy 17 as I have seen it do triple display in person. Again though, if configured with an AMD/ATI chip, it should include the eyefinity capabilities.

HP Envy 17 (Two HDD, HDMI output, Two Display Ports)
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...rd_A9P78UA_ABA_17_3_Intel_Core_i7_2670QM.html

Alienware 18x (Two HDD, VGA Output, HDMI Output, HDMI Input)
http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-m18x/pd

Origin EON-17-X-PRO (Two HDD, DVI Output, HDMI Output & Display Port)
http://www.originpc.com/eon17-x-pro-laptop-features.asp

Sager NP9270 (Three HDD, DVI Output, HDMI Output & Display Port)
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_info&model_name=NP9270

Just a small sample. I'm sure there are plenty of others out there.
 
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I should have clarified... I'm not panning on using the external monitors when I'm on the road. That's just for when I'm back home. There's no way I'm lugging around two LCD monitors when I'm travelling. ;)

The Origin EON-17x Pro looks amazing:
*Intel Core i7 3930K 3.2GHz Hex-Core Processor
*FOUR internal hard drives
*32GB RAM
*2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M

That's pretty sick. It beats the pants off my current desktop. Of course, it costs a pretty penny (around $4000) but I don't think I'll need a new computer for a few years after that... Still, with Ivy Bridge just around the corner, is it worth waiting to see what Apple comes out with for their next 17" MBP?
 
i would go mac for a couple of reasons, the uni-body feels sturdier and disperses heat better, usually better keyboard layout and rest area for your hands, batteries usually last much longer, more stable and repeatable performance, performance does not drastically change when fans are on, fans usually not as loud, usually bigger track-pad, usually much better speakers, sometimes better screens and angle of view than other laptops, you get more video and photo oriented and useful apps, Photoshop seems to work much better and more stable on mac. it's not all about specs.

if your planing on using resolve, you might get a better more stable performance and faster support/updates from black-magic.

no matter what you choose, i would definitely go for ssd for the primary disk.

SSD - 256GB or more.
RAM - 8GB or more(speed is better than unused space).
GPU - you don't have to go overboard, just the recommended(not minimum system requirements, go for approved list or recommended) for the apps your going to use.
CPU - again, you don't really have to go high end, mid tier is better bang for buck.

if you have a bit left over,

if your doing a lot of photoshop and editing, a wacom intuos.
add media adapter(cf - sd - SSD)
small and somewhat portable caddy or raid(4 bays), you don't have to fill it to maximum capacity right away(better than having hot HDD in the laptop)
make sure you have additional usb2/3, hdmi, extension power plugs, dvi, ..etc.
if you require sdi or hd-sdi out device.
if you require a 10bit monitor.

your on the verge of both the new generation processor and app upgrade(and if you know adobe, it will be heavier and require more power and capacity compared to previous versions).
 
I vote PC. I recently shifted away from editing on my MacBook to editing on my PC laptop. Why? I wanted to shift to the Adobe platform. CUDA support and their Mercury Playback engine means I no longer have to transcode to ProRes. I get to edit native video files. Just like the old days. Apple has basically abandoned filmmakers while Adobe keeps innovating. I supposed FCP X has GPU acceleration, but who wants to use that? Plus, they use the Quicktime engine which is a non-starter for editing purposes due to the Quicktime bug. The workaround was pre-emptive transcoding with 5DtoRGB. The quality was good. But now I don't have to transcode at all. The quality stays perfect and Quicktime isn't used during editing. All is good.
 
mentatDUKE said:
I vote PC. I recently shifted away from editing on my MacBook to editing on my PC laptop. Why? I wanted to shift to the Adobe platform. CUDA support and their Mercury Playback engine means I no longer have to transcode to ProRes. I get to edit native video files. Just like the old days. Apple has basically abandoned filmmakers while Adobe keeps innovating. I supposed FCP X has GPU acceleration, but who wants to use that? Plus, they use the Quicktime engine which is a non-starter for editing purposes due to the Quicktime bug. The workaround was pre-emptive transcoding with 5DtoRGB. The quality was good. But now I don't have to transcode at all. The quality stays perfect and Quicktime isn't used during editing. All is good.
Click to expand...

What he said!

I am currently lookign at using a Sager Laptop as my portable editing workstation, the Sager NP8130 to be exact.
I get Nvidia Cuda, 16GB RAM, two 750GB HDDs and a Msata SSD for OS with a 95% Gamut Screen for ~$1600 USD.
Thats a steal when I compare it to other brands like HP, Dell, Element etc.
My 2 cents
 
Oh wow, I didn't realize that Origin offers 4 drives now in their 17x, that's crazy.

Ivy Bridge is a 'tick' on intel's roadmap so it won't be as big a jump as Sandy Bridge (tock) was from Westmere/Nehalem. Ivy's main new advantage is Intel's new integrated HD 4000 graphics, which I don't think is supported by AE or the Mercury Playback engine. The general computing side is most likely a marginal boost at best. Overclocking and power consumption will be better since it's a die shrink, but who overclocks their notebook?
 
Don't forget to consider Alienware laptops. They get a bad rap as overpriced (due to Alienware's history I think) but aren't really. Particularly, if you want a big screen, look at the M18x (starts at $2,000): http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-m18x/pd.aspx

Any gaming laptop could be called a video-editing laptop since the hardware required for both is basically the same. "Gaming" just makes for better marketing.

Apple build quality is hugely overrated IMO. People tend to compare Mac's to cheaper PC's rather than their actual priced competition.
 
My goodness... I've been researching these laptops for a couple of weeks now. Here's one configuration I just assembled on www.avadirect.com:

[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="class: tdp, colspan: 5"]
  • CLEVO P270WM Core i7 Notebook Barebone, Intel® X79, 17.3" Full HD LED Glossy
  • INTEL Core i7-3930K Six-Core, 3.2 - 3.8GHz TB, LGA2011, 12MB L3 Cache
  • NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 675M 2GB GDDR5 Mobile Graphics Card for P270WM
  • CRUCIAL 32GB (4 x 8GB) PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz SDRAM SODIMM, CL9, Non-ECC
  • SEAGATE 750GB Momentus® XT, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache, 8GB Hybrid SLC SSD, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ, OEM
  • SEAGATE 750GB Momentus® XT, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache, 8GB Hybrid SLC SSD, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ, OEM
  • SEAGATE 750GB Momentus® XT, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache, 8GB Hybrid SLC SSD, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ, OEM
  • SEAGATE 750GB Momentus® XT, 7200 RPM, 32MB cache, 8GB Hybrid SLC SSD, 2.5-Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ, OEM
  • RAID RAID 0 (striping), min 2 hard drives required
  • CLEVO Hard Drive Caddy (Required for 4th HDD Installation, Replaces Optical Drive)
  • NETWORK Built-in 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet LAN Card
  • INTEL Centrino® Ultimate-N 6200 Wireless Card, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, 11/54/300 Mbps, Internal PCIe Half Mini Card
  • NONE Standard Carrying Case for Notebook Included
  • MICROSOFT Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM
  • SERVICE OEM System Recovery (bootable CD/DVD only)
  • WARRANTY Extended 3 Year Warranty for P180HM / X7200 Clevo Notebooks
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
All this comes out to $3697.43. Holy cow.

I've read that these laptops have approximately 30 minutes of battery life. Yikes. Has anyone here used something like this? Any first-hand experiences you could share would be greatly appreciated.
 
That's a seriously beefy machine!

I vote PC like many others in the thread- not that there's anything against Mac (Back in the 80s and 90s and used to be an unabashed fanboy), but when it comes to bang-for-your-buck nothing compares to the "dark side".

If you've got the cash to spend on that, power to you. Personally, I don't like investing into a computer long term as they are rather disposable in this industry. They depreciate too quickly for me to justify spending a lot on it, so I never buy "top of the line". Rather, my plan has always been to get something fast enough for now, then sell it in a year or two while it still has value and buy the next model. So far it has worked out that I'm never out too much money, and my machine is always relatively up to date (and I've never spent even close to $1000 on a laptop since adopting this plan a few years ago).

This may not be the best advice for anyone else, but if you are interested I would suggest looking into the Dell Outlet. Often below market value, same warranty as a new model. But perhaps I'm more frugal about my editing machine than most are.
 
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