new laptop, which GPU?

Hi,

I'm looking at buying a new laptop specifically to run DaVinci Resolve during a 10 month trip. We'll be moving every few days, so weight and size are important.

I'll be working with h.264 4k 25fps material which will get rendered to 1080p, and am willing to use a proxy workflow. I can't transcode the material up front to fi. DNxHR since I'll be working with limited storage means. I'll be using a lot of zooming and panning (which is why I start of with the 4k material to render to 1080p) for which I want realtime playback during cutting, but I don't require high performance once I get to colour grading.

To that end I've limited myself to a number of light weight gaming laptop series like the Razer Blade 15, MSI GS65 stealth, Gigabyte Aero 15, ...

But now my question is, would I be ok with the current generation with the GTX 1070 Ti Max-Q GPU, or should I get one of the RTX 2070 Max-Q laptops which are getting released this month?
Is a 50% price increase to get a new RTX equipped model over a GTX laptop worth it? Are there other considerations between these GPUs like better thermals and lower power draw to take into account?

Do I even need a 1070, or could I get away with a 1060 or even 4GB 1050 Ti for my proposed workflow? (This would open up the selection to also include fi. the Lenovo X1 extreme.)

Thanks,
Bernard

Hi.

nVidea will launch 40+ laptops with RTX from January 29th. 17 of them will be with Max-Q. I don't know the prices, but mobile RTX cards is not sold by distributors like Desktop RTX cards, but direct to the laptops manufactures. So you can always hope, that the prices will be lower.

I always recommend medium or large sized laptops, so they can get rid of the generated heat.

When Intel introduced the 6 core mobile CPU's with more performance and heat, was most of the laptop manufacturers very fast to introduce new 6 core models, but only a few of them improved the cooling. Now they get the chance to make better cooling. But I don't expect that the will use the opportunity, as nVidea already is working on next generation 7nm mobile graphics cards that will generate less heat for the same performance.

We don't know anything about the new RTX laptops. nVidea showed just two picture of them at CES, a MSI, and the other one was a Acer. I expect several reviews in the weeks after 29th.
I don't know when you depart.

Regards Carsten.

We're not leaving until September, so I've got plenty of time. I'd like to get the laptop by the summer, so I have some time to get everything set up and get acquainted with it.

Hi,

I'm looking at buying a new laptop specifically to run DaVinci Resolve during a 10 month trip. We'll be moving every few days, so weight and size are important.

I'll be working with h.264 4k 25fps material which will get rendered to 1080p, and am willing to use a proxy workflow. I can't transcode the material up front to fi. DNxHR since I'll be working with limited storage means. I'll be using a lot of zooming and panning (which is why I start of with the 4k material to render to 1080p) for which I want realtime playback during cutting, but I don't require high performance once I get to colour grading.

Since you do a lot of panning and zooming and 4k h.264 you will need a fast CPU(6 core will do)

To that end I've limited myself to a number of light weight gaming laptop series like the Razer Blade 15, MSI GS65 stealth, Gigabyte Aero 15, ...

Those are good options.

But now my question is, would I be ok with the current generation with the GTX 1070 Ti Max-Q GPU, or should I get one of the RTX 2070 Max-Q laptops which are getting released this month?
Is a 50% price increase to get a new RTX equipped model over a GTX laptop worth it? Are there other considerations between these GPUs like better thermals and lower power draw to take into account?

Do I even need a 1070, or could I get away with a 1060 or even 4GB 1050 Ti for my proposed workflow? (This would open up the selection to also include fi. the Lenovo X1 extreme.)

Thanks,
Bernard

1070 is needed for realtime playback in resolve, don't go lower, going higher won't bring you a lot.

I'll be working with h.264 4k 25fps material which will get rendered to 1080p

If at all possible, don't buy anything without first trying the actual footage you'll be editing, as it's impossible to predict performance with h.264 4K material. Nobody here can assure you that any given choice will be satisfactory, or that spending more will necessarily yield notably better performance.

At the current state forget about working with Resolve on a Windows laptop. See my threads for tons of issues. H264 HW decoding is broken and nothing but issues with the iGPU. Also 4GB vRAM won't cut anything either. Save your money and your sanity by doing the research first.

Honestly, I'd buy a used Mac book and use FCXP during my next travels. Resolve is just not ready for Windows laptops, in particular not with H264 or H265.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

At the current state forget about working with Resolve on a Windows laptop. See my threads for tons of issues. H264 HW decoding is broken and nothing but issues with the iGPU. Also 4GB vRAM won't cut anything either. Save your money and your sanity by doing the research first.

Honestly, I'd buy a used Mac book and use FCXP during my next travels. Resolve is just not ready for Windows laptops, in particular not with H264 or H265.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

You really must have done everything wrong that you can do wrong.
I know people(who are also on this forum) editing 8k.R3D footage in Resolve on a windows laptop while being very happy with the performance.

We're not leaving until September, so I've got plenty of time. I'd like to get the laptop by the summer, so I have some time to get everything set up and get acquainted with it.

In August 2019 a lot may have changed(lower prices, higher speeds, etc..) compared to now.
New big hard and software announcements will be made at Computex (May 28 – June 1, 2019).

At the current state forget about working with Resolve on a Windows laptop. See my threads for tons of issues. H264 HW decoding is broken and nothing but issues with the iGPU. Also 4GB vRAM won't cut anything either. Save your money and your sanity by doing the research first.

Honestly, I'd buy a used Mac book and use FCXP during my next travels. Resolve is just not ready for Windows laptops, in particular not with H264 or H265.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

You really must have done everything wrong that you can do wrong.
I know people(who are also on this forum) editing 8k.R3D footage in Resolve on a windows laptop while being very happy with the performance.

Yes, please go into details about what I've done wrong. I posted enough times here with issues, so far didn't see a reply from you. Also one particular crash issues is certainly h264/h265 HW decoding. So not sure how Red stuff matters. Please enlighten me and others with your enormous knowledge.

I would by a Mac Book Pro with Vega gpu

I'll be running Linux on the laptop.
If necessary I'd be willing to dual boot with Windows for resolve, but a Mac is out of the question. (There's no decent hardware support for Linux on the MacBook pro for the past few years.)

I can wait until after computex, but seeing as all the major manufacturers of the kind of laptop I'm looking at are now refreshing their models I doubt there's going to be major updates again by August.

Either way it looks like I've learned two important things: 1070 is the minimum, and I'll need to wait a bit for reviews/experiences with the new rtx laptops. Maybe Lenovo will offer a faster gpu in their x1 extreme meanwhile

At the current state forget about working with Resolve on a Windows laptop. See my threads for tons of issues. H264 HW decoding is broken and nothing but issues with the iGPU. Also 4GB vRAM won't cut anything either. Save your money and your sanity by doing the research first.

Honestly, I'd buy a used Mac book and use FCXP during my next travels. Resolve is just not ready for Windows laptops, in particular not with H264 or H265.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

You really must have done everything wrong that you can do wrong.
I know people(who are also on this forum) editing 8k.R3D footage in Resolve on a windows laptop while being very happy with the performance.

It's almost like you didn't even attempt to actually read his post...

I also would look into a MacBook - not necessarily for FCPX, but because I personally think (from experience) that the macOS version of Resolve is significantly more polished than its Windows counterpart. Far less bugs, more stable, better performance on even lower end hardware, etc.

And, keep in mind that until fairly recently top-end MacBook Pros were largely comparable to budget Windows Gaming Laptops in Specs (and maxed out at 16GB RAM). I certainly don't think the "platform" is the issue here, either... otherwise we could make the opposite argument with Premiere Pro CC

I have never run Resolve on Linux, but I wonder how that version compares to the others.

Well, I don't think it's about 'polishing' the versions for Mac better. Apple has complete control over the OS and the hardware and can optimize to their heart's delight with a limited number of configurations. FCP-X is really fast and Resolve is quite stable on Macs.

On PCs it's a jungle out there, the number of possible configurations is probably approaching the number of stars in a small galaxy. Too much can go wrong that the developers can't really foresee. That's why it's so important that we all publish our hardware info and crash logs. Remember the recent problems with Intel GPUs interfering and everybody fiddling with driver versions or the BIOS.

That said, you pay a premium for this comfort and currently, Apple has no machine that can approach the speed of an optimized PC or Windows laptop.

Just take one thing: Hardware H264/H265 decoding on Windows laptops currently is broken and bombs out with Resolve allocating all available RAM and closing. There are multiple reports about this issue on this forum.

It works alright with the Mac version of Resolve. Possibly, because Resolve there can rely on OS functions.

Then decent H264/H265 GPU decoding is probably one of the most important thing to have in a laptop as it frees crucial CPU resources. So yes, the Mac version seems far more usable to me.

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Peter, I'm not that knowledgeable on the nuts and bolts, and I've read a few of your posts. I just wanted add a data point that I am able to use Resolve with .h264/.h265 100mbps 4k drone footage on a modestly equipped Asus laptop with Intel integrated gpu and nVidia card.

I convert to optimized media and if I do a little color correction, I do start to get the "out of vram" warning. But I can plug along slowly.

Asus ZenBook Pro
i7-6700HQ Quad-Core 2.6 GHz
16 GB DDR4 SDRAM
GTX 960M with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM
Samsung 512 GB M.2 PCIe

That said, you pay a premium for this comfort and currently, Apple has no machine that can approach the speed of an optimized PC or Windows laptop.

This is true, but I think "speed" should be considered in context of how much work you can accomplish over the course of a year. There are loads of threads here from Windows users (and multiple pages in the Configuration Guide) devoted to system specs. With the Mac, your research and decision-making take about 5 minutes; in contrast with Windows it can take hours (just see all the threads here in the forum asking which GPU, what motherboard, etc. to use for a Windows machine, and compare the number of pages in the Configuration Guide devoted to Windows specs versus those for Mac). And if Resolve really does work more smoothly on the Mac with fewer crashes and bugs (I don't know if that's true, but some posts here on the forum imply that it is), that should be factored into the "speed" equation as well.

To me, the biggest drawback of the Mac apart from initial cost, is long-term cost: the inability to upgrade components or even repair things yourself makes it a much more expensive proposition over the long term.

I actually spend more time each day on Windows than I do on the Mac, but for Resolve the choice was pretty clear for me: the extra financial investment in a Mac pays off in terms of just being able to get my work done with minimal fuss and frustration. I don't work on video for a living, but even if I did my "total cost of ownership" equation would be based more on total potential productivity than speed per se.

There are some new very powerful laptops based on latest Nvidia coming out. MSI ones are also just 2kg, not 5

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-raise ... 896.0.html

Computex might bring NAVI and then everything changes again. I.o.w. buy when you need it.

Thank you OP for the question. I'm EXACTLY on the same boat with you at the moment; looking for a light decent-powerful laptop to working with Resolve on the go. I also looking at Razer Balde 15 and have the same fustration about which GPU varient to choose. Looking forward to more suggestion.

I'm currently considering the TongFang GK5CP0Z. But I'm waiting until the lenovo y540 comes out in May to decide.

I'm currently considering the TongFang GK5CP0Z. But I'm waiting until the lenovo y540 comes out in May to decide.

Hi,
may I ask which laptop you bought? Are you happy?
I am planning to get a new laptop for resolve editing as well - the Lenovo X1 Extreme Gen2 is on my list...

Thanks.
Best.
Fabian

I got the pc specialist recoil iii with rtx 2070. (A labeled TONGFANG GK5CQ7Z)

Happy with it so far.