Page 1 of 1
Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 2:25 am
by Sminky
Hi all,
I use sketchup at work to visualize solar systems projects and recently I have been doing some walk-through animations for customers that prefer a video to play during presentations.
So far I've been using a laptop with just intel hd4000 and therefore I couldn't use octane so I've been rendering these animations with a CPU based renderer with quite low quality settings and small sizes but they still took really long (compared to output quality).
Now my company got commissioned with many more videos so I need a much faster solution and I think octane 2 will be perfect.
This being said, I don't have a fixed workplace so I need to keep working with laptop only and searching on the web I found two models that seem usable: both use i7 4810m CPU and have 16gb ram and ssd had but one uses gtx880m as gpu while the other one has quadro k3100m.
Wich would you, expert users, reccomend for octane sketchup plugin?
Thanks for your time,
Best regards
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 7:46 am
by glimpse
I don't know what model You have, but if I were You I'd probably take a expander box for one card and get it with something way faster than You can house into any laptop. You['re working with a laptop, but there's a good chance You have a socket for electricity around all the time. So this way is better in my eyes. However it depends what computer You have, what conections & so..
As for laptops I don't know very much for sure, so maybe others could give You some info on this =)
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 10:44 am
by mib2berlin
Hi, the GTX 880m is the fastest mobile card for Octane on market, good choice.
As glimpse mention, this is also possible:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7987/runn ... nderbolt-2
Cheers, mib
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 3:51 pm
by Sminky
Thank you for the advice,
In the mean time I also found an affordable laptop with 2xgtx880m that I guess could satisfy our needs.
The external gpu solution is not really practical because I should bring around with me wherever I move and that is not really feasible.
Thanks again for confirming that the gtx880m is the best choice,
Best regards
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 7:46 pm
by voon
just be aware that laptop GPUs have nothing on the desktop versions. A GTX 780ti is massively more powerful than an 880M. I assume you know this, just to avoid disapointment.
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 3:08 pm
by Sminky
Hi,
Yes, of course I know about the huge difference between desktop and laptop gpu but I can't really do anything different.
Thanks anyway for pointing out.
Just to be a little more practical so maybe you could give me your thoughts about it:
now I have a laptop with just intel graphics hd4000 so I use a CPU renderer (twilight) and I like it a lot for still shots because I can do them with acceptable quality on a 800x600 size or a little more, in an hour or so (keep in mind I just need some good looking images to print on a document explaining the project); now the thing is that some clients asked for videos of the sketchup animation and to do those I set it so it would take a minute or so for each frame on my 3rd generation i7 with its 2.something ghz clock and 4 threads. I then left it rendering all the night (in a hotel room) and in the morning I had the frames ready but the quality of them is a little disappointing to say the least.
Now my question would be: in such case, what kind of improvement could I expect from doing the same thing but using octane with single or double gtx880m? Leaving the quality at the same level how much faster do you think I could have the renderings done?
Thanks for any help on the matter
I'm so anxious to try octane 2 for sketchup anyway!
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 4:40 pm
by gordonrobb
Do you have a link to that laptop with double 880Ms?
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:14 am
by Sminky
http://sp.mouse-jp.co.jp/www.g-tune.jp/ ... l/i1110/#g
Here is the link.
It's in japanese but you can see the "gtx880m x2 sli" part.
You can customize everything else so the price range is from 2400$ up.
Regards
Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 6:50 am
by gordonrobb
Cool I found some alien wear options in the UK. If I ever get a laptop, that'll be the way I go

Re: Next laptop gpu suggestion
Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 1:27 am
by Sminky
So, going back to my situation, my company doesn't seem willing to pay for the double gpu notebook so do you think with the specifics I wrote before , would I see a good improvement using octane with a single 880m compared to what I have now?
Thanks for your time
Regards