What video cards work in lite notebooks for Xpress Pro HD

d54321r

New member
I'm looking to buy a lite notebook (6 lbs) and am having trouble finding a video card that will work with Avid Xpress Pro HD that comes in a notebook of that size.

Specs of what I want (I think):
Intel core duo T2400 1.83GHz processor
100 GB 7200 rpm hard drive
Video card ????
2 GB ram
15.4" WSXGA+ screen ???
Windows XP Professional

What video cards are working for Xpress Pro HD in a lite notebook?
 
I don't think that is a qualified system for Avid. I'd recommend you go with an HP nx9600. Replace the hard drive with a 7200rpm 100GB. And get 2GB RAM. Also, try to get a 3.6Ghz with the ATI x600 grafx card.
 
The newer ATI graphics cards, such as the x1600 cards often used in current PC (and Mac) laptops will NOT work with Xpress Pro HD on Win XP. Avid have solid support for the NVidia chipsets, but with this ATI card you will not get any playback of video in the Composer monitor.

Some of the older Radion chipsets do work and Avid even has some laptops with ATI cards on their specs page, but on the PC side the general rule is to stick with NVidia cards - certainly for desktops. However the one DC mentions is listed as a supported mobile card so you should be OK there.
 
My Dell laptop, wich is well working with Avid

T2600
2Go RAM
Nvidia 7800
hdd 7200 but I capture on external HDD maxtor

I know it's not always easy to find a laptop with Nvidia graphics but it was an indispensable condition for me.
 
My configuration:

Works PERFECTLY with

a Dell Inspiron 9300 Pentium M 740 1.73Mhz 1Gb RAM Nvidia GEforce 6800
and external Maxtor 200Gb 7200 rpm usb 2.0...
 
Hi E_D_N

I have the same configuration as you, even with more RAM (2 gigs), but it dosen't works so fine. I cab scrub through the clips, but if i start to play them, i only hear the sound. The Image is not moving. How can that be?

Greetings from Germany
Astaroth
 
Astaroth said:
Hi E_D_N

I have the same configuration as you, even with more RAM (2 gigs), but it dosen't works so fine. I cab scrub through the clips, but if i start to play them, i only hear the sound. The Image is not moving. How can that be?

Greetings from Germany
Astaroth

Hi Astaroth -- Ich hab gar keine Ahnung, was das Problem ist.


I do some pretty extensive work with my configuration, scrubbing through clips from several bins and playing them back at high quality in either the source or record monitor and I sometimes even have another application running in the background + Avid's Marquee title tool.

Even I sometimes am amazed that everything is running so smoothly...

Perhaps it has to do with the drivers. Did you check that you have the latest drivers from nVidia?

Also, experiment with the OpenGL settings to see if it makes any difference.

And how does your Inspiron do at other tasks? Do you play games? I can run HALF-LIFE 2 or even F.E.A.R. at almost the highest settings with nary a hiccup -- maybe some dropped frames here and there, but that's it.

Even 3D apps like 3Ds max run without effort. Problem is rendering (takes time). Photoshop CS2 is power-hungry and my machine DOES hang when I do some pretty demanding retouching jobs... Actually, CS2 was the only software that used to crash pretty frequently on my machine -- until Adobe released a patch CS2 version 9.0.1... now everything is fine, so I believe it was the software, not the machine. COMBUSTION 4 runs needs some big resources -- esp. when dealing with particles -- but I do OK there too.

The key is to optimize your machine for best performance -- get rid of the junk and background processes running on your machine and hogging memory (I have about only 40-45 processes running at any given time) -- and one of the best guides to do so is
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html

esp. important is the pagefile / RAM balance as far as memory allocation is concerned... but the fact that you're using 2GB of ram is perplexing since I do well on half that.

You can also go to http://www.notebookforums.com/ and navigate to the DELL section. You'll find plenty of guides there to help you optimize your 9300 and video card settings.

And btw, don't think having one of those new core duo processors would help that much. A friend of mine got a new Dell D820 with a 1.83Mhz Core Duo and 1GB or RAM and he's complaining that it runs slower than his old Dell 8500 with a 2.4 Pentium 4. The Inspiron 9200 / 9300 / 9400 series have the best performance / price ratios when outfitted with one of the high end nVidia cards 6800 / 7800 / 7900 and can pretty much handle anything thrown at them.


Do some tweaking and adjustments and I'm sure things will run smoother.

Hope that helped.



P.S. : Your problem could also be due to a codec / file compatibility problem. What kind of clips / files are these you're editing?
 
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