Member Avatar for ibthevivin

I'm wondering if anybody has extensive knowledge about graphics cards. I basically need to find a laptop that can support all these softwares:

AutoCAD
3D Max
Maya
Mud Box
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Photoshop

From my research I've been running into the NVIDIA Quadro 1000M but there are only a handful of laptops that come with that and they're really expensive. I'm wondering if any of the NVIDIA GTX cards would support those softwares above properly. On Autodesk.com all they recommend are Quadro cards which seemed odd. Are Quadro cards REALLY the only type of graphics cards that'll support their software? That just doesn't sit right.

Thanks!

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 289 Views
  • 9 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by CimmerianX
Member Avatar for caperjack

AutoCAD

my old dell optiplex 745 with basic onboard video will run most of those programs ,not very well mind you ,but i did use photoshop and a 2d 3d program [just fiddiling around ]at one time ,that is why they reccomend the Quadro i guess ,for best results ,searching google you will get a hundred different answers ,because of peoples preferences ,i don't have a suggestion ,just a bit of insite

but only those who use the programs on a daily bases will have the best answers ,and they are likely to busy to be on help/suggestions forums sharing there opinions .lol

many different choices out there for sure .the very first one in the list offers some nice choices
https://www.google.ca/search?q=Picking+the+perfect+3D+rendering+laptop&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=rcs

Edited by caperjack
Member Avatar for CimmerianX

To clarify: By 'rendering laptop' do you mean the actual rendering process or just displaying the images during build and manipulation?

If by 'rendering' you actually mean rendering, then don't do it on a laptop. Rendering should always (if at all possiable) be done on another host or a render farm. You don't want to render on the same unit you use to produce the content. This is true for CAD and 3dsmax, not so much for photoshop.

IF you only want speed during the build and manipulation, then you'll want a vid card with supported GPU.

I.e. for photoshop, here's the list: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/tested-video-cards-photoshop-cs5.html

Any card that supports (almost all of the decent ones nowadays) OpenGL 'may' be supported to some extent. So you need to check each software website for a compatibility list to see if the app can take advantage of the GPU on the card. Even if it is not supported 100%, there are tweaks you can use (especially in photoshop) to turn off certain features if the app becomes buggy.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.