buying a macbook pro or stick to powered Alienware lap

[Space monkeys]

hi guys,

got a question..

Am planning to buy a new laptop but cant figure out what would suit me best.
If i would go for a macbook pro the graphics card is a AMD Radeon HD 6770M met 1 GB GDDR5.

Going for a Alienware i have the option for a Dual 1,5 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M SLI™

3d studio max, AE, Premiere and resolume avenue is my primary goal

the price is almost the same

what would you do ?

[samhodgkiss]

Dont get an Alienware. The new 'Optimus' technology in the Nvidia cards doesn't play well with Resolume. There are other posts about it here and on Resolume forums.

If your based in the UK try http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ and build a custom laptop. ATI cards are the way to go if you are using Resolume.

[sleepytom]

I would not buy a clevo / segar laptop (which is what the pcspecialist.co.uk machines are)

I would buy the mac - it's a much better quality of build than any PC. Resolume is developed on Macbook Pros and the mac version has a few features the PC version doesn't. After Effects and 3dsMax don't really use the GPU for anything.

There are also more interesting VJ apps on the mac platform these days. The PC side is quite limited unless you have lots of money to spend on things like the new Avolights server software.

If you need to run windows on the mac then bootcamp works very well, it's not possible to run OSX on the PC (hackintosh aside, but your not looking at machines which are suitable to an easy hackintosh build)

[alfaleader]

I also had some problems with nvidia optimus and resolume.

For our first setup with our 1T-C2-750 we tried to connect the laptop with resolume to the video mixer. We couldn't get a signal, tried different stuff but I couldn't get it to work 100%

Now I switched to mac, and I couldn't miss it anymore!

[Thelooca]

A huge plus for mac in my opinion are the syphon possibilities; Beïng able to 'share' video between different applications opens up a new vj-world!

[Space monkeys]

aa thats a shame to hear, already bought it (by company)

And never thought nvidia was that bad. Always worked with nvidia laps and never had problems. The reason i stick to nvidia is due the phyics en cuda cores AE and 3d max. And also wanted the hdmi-input

well hopefully he does the job

p.s. if it's true what i read about the optimus technology then am heading into trouble it seems (

its specced with:
Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 2860QM (2,50 GHz, 8 MB cache, Quad Core)
256 GB op mobiliteit gerichte Solid State-harde
Dual 1,5 GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M SLI™
24.576 MB (2 x 4.096 + 2 x 8.192) 1.333 MHz Dual Channel DDR3

[sleepytom]

After effects doesn't use cuda at all

[Space monkeys]

aye your right, i meant that 3d max uses max. 100 cuda cores and after effects premiere use the hardware acelleration