Blackmagic Forum

Hello everyone, I'm very new to Davinci Resolve Studio and normally I would not bother all of you busy editors with this, but I'm getting so many conflicting answers looking online that I really don't know what laptop would work for me.

I am using a BMPCC4K to shoot and although I am mostly editing HD videos I will be shooting in 4K this spring and summer. File formats are either BRAW 12:1, Pro Res 422, or H.264 (mpeg). I have a basic camera I shoot with as well- a Canon 80D.

From what I've been reading an NVIDIA card is the best choice as Davinci offloads processing to the GPU and uses the CUDA cores. With that in mind I went looking for laptops from MSI and Asus with RTX 2060/2070 and 3060-3070 series GPUs to start...then the fun began lol.

I googled 'Best laptops for Davinci Resolve Studio' and about 10 websites had their lists.

What puzzled me was the statement made for a review of the Razor Blade 15 laptop which can be configured with a GeForce RTX 2080 Super, so I thought- that didn't seem too bad at all, but when the reviewer mentioned the cons they stated that the 'Top end GPU is not essential for video editing', basically insinuating that it was overkill.

On that site they mentioned you only need 4GB of VRAM and every laptop they reviewed came with GTX 1050 or 1060...

But on another site, I've seen people mention that one should try to get a card with at least 6-8GB of VRAM. I was planning on having 8GB of VRAM, so my first question is, "Is 8GB of VRAM overkill and if it is, why?"

My budget is around $2000.00 US, well actually it's a little more because most laptops I've looked at have only one drive installed and I would like 2- one for OS apps and the other for video content. As well, I would like to upgrade RAM from 16 to 32GB.

My main drive will likely only be 512GB with the extra drive being 1TB.

When using Davinci Resolve Studio, I would like to be able to use effects and transitions but I will not be doing any super high res work- just HD for now, then 4K in the spring. I don't see myself ever needing more than 4K as I will not be making films.

Some laptops I've looked at were: MSI GP76 15.6, Asus TUF Dash 15, Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 and Razer Blade 15.

As I had mentioned earlier, important to me are that it has room for extra storage for video and that it be able to accommodate at least 32 GB of RAM. I'm not quite sure what CPU I would need...i7 9th gen? Ryzen 7 or 9? They all seem powerful

I should note that I will not be playing any games on the laptop I eventually settle on.

I apologize for the long post but I was hoping an expert or two on these forums (or someone experienced) could recommend a decent laptop for me keeping my budget in mind.

Thanks for your time and God Bless,


Fenton

Hi.

In Resolve the CPU is used to run the app, disk I/O, fusion, compression and decompression of codecs.
Resolve does all its image processing in the GPU on the graphics card. More CUDA/OpenCL Cores are better.

In the paid STUDIO Version of Resolve, can certain combination of Codec, Resolutions, Bit width and Chroma subsampling be hardware decoded/encoded on either a AMD/nVidea Graphics card or in a Intel non Xeon CPU.
Then you can use a little less powerfull CPU.

4K videos have 4 times the pixels of HD. And for 4K is the absolute minimum 6 GB of vRam on the Graphics Card, but minimum 8 GB of vRam or more are recommended. Graphics Cards with 6 GB or 8 GB of vRam generate a lot of heat, that is difficult to get rid of in a small cabinet, as in a tiny Laptop. So most Laptop slow down the speed of both the CPU and GPU.

Normally do I recommend people on the road to look for a medium to large sized Laptop, so it can get rid of the generated heat.

And you can't do the same work on a 8 core Laptop as on a 12 or 16 core Desktop, but for people on the road is the best laptops for Resolve, a powerfull Gamer Laptop with extra Ram and may be an extra MVMe SSD.

Can I ask if you have considered a Desktop? A Desktop is a much better choice for Resolve.

Regards Carsten.

Hi Carsten, thanks so much for replying.

I only have a budget of a little over 2K US so I didn't think I could assemble a suitable desktop with that amount, especially since I couldn't find a GPU anywhere for a fair price. I opted for a laptop thinking it was a less expensive option, plus the GPU are pre-installed at many of the newer laptops have 2060s and 2070's in them. I saw one laptop in particular that seemed to be nicely fitted as well as having upgrade options- MSI GP76 10UE-013CA Leopard 17.3" 144Hz 3ms Gaming Laptop Intel Core i7-10750H RTX3060 16GB 1TB NVMe SSD Win10 VR Ready.

Does that laptop seem ok?

Regardless, in your opinion is it possible to purchase components separately to assemble a custom desktop with my budget?

I have to reiterate that when I had initially considered a desktop configuration, I could not find an NVIDIA GeForce RTX card on Amazon or Ebay- unless I was willing to pay 2 to 3 times the amount of market value from resellers. If I spend 1K on a GPU I don't think I'd have much left over for the rest of the desktop build.

Initially, I was looking at an AMD Ryzen 9 chip, with 32 GB of 3200 RAM with a GeForce RTX 2070, but like I had mentioned, those cards are scarce and those that are selling them are charging ridiculous prices I cannot afford- so I decided a pre-built laptop with upgrade options was a a better bet, hence why I was considering the MSI.

I've read that newer laptops generally run loud with fans but I won't be doing any audio work with my video editing computer (laptop/desktop) so that noise wouldn't bother me. Since every laptop I looked at was a gaming laptop, I thought the CPUs were meant to be driven hard with turbo/overclocking customization and the internal design was built to dissipate heat sufficiently.

All things considered, I thought a laptop would suit my overall needs given my limited budget, largely because I couldn't find a fairly priced desktop graphics card on Amazon, Ebay, New Egg or even Best Buy- I was surprised at how many cards are out of stock everywhere, but I guess the pandemic has taken it's toll everywhere, so it makes sense; the price gouging on some of the cards is borderline criminal though lol.

Anyway, any sage advice you could give me at this point would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time and hope your Sunday is going great.


Take care,


Fent

I second the advice to rather get a good desktop.
But if you desperately need portability, consider the upcoming MBP 14" M1X.

If you need a solution today, consider a MacBook Air M1 for editing on the road and some limited grading plus a good Windows desktop for final production

You can pound in a nail with a wrench, the work will get done. But a wrench is not the proper tool for that job.

In this industry, Laptops will forever be wrenches.

The proper tools here are hammers and desktops.

Gentlemen, thank you for replying.

I replied to Carlsten but my post hadn't been approved yet so you couldn't see my reply.

Basically, I mentioned that originally I wanted to assemble a desktop but GeForce NVIDIA cards are out of stock everywhere including Amazon, New Egg and Best Buy.

I'm not, nor can I afford to pay 1500.00 for a 3 year old card that resellers are price gouging with.

That's the main reason why I opted for a laptop. I'm not a professional by any means and I'll mostly be editing HD video and some 4K this summer.

The laptop I'm seriously considering is the MSI GP66 Leopard (MSI GP66 10UG-036CA Leopard 15.6")
It accommodates 64GB of RAM and comes stock with a GeForce RTX 3070 card. It also has capacity for 2x M.2 SSD slot (NVMe PCIe Gen3).

I don't mind using a good wrench, to use your analogy .

I appreciate your advice good people but a desktop seems to be out of the question and I have no desire to switch to a mac.

Thanks so much for your replies everyone. I'm still going to do more research.


Take care.

Come on, Jim, there may be reasons somebody is asking about laptops.
To stay in the picture: when I go for a holiday on bicycle, I don't take the tools from the trunk of a Range Rover.

If you need a laptop because you need to work on the move or on set then you may be able to get a laptop for 2k to 'run' resolve for basic duties such as reviewing footage and doing basic edits but it will struggle to do anything more advanced.

No worries fellas! Uli and Jim- no need to let my incompetence and tiny wallet get in the way of your professional forum decorum lol.

I'm not on a deadline or anything so I'm crossing my fingers that NVIDIA will be getting those cards out to the stores before long...and if not, I'll just get a mid-range gaming laptop; anything is better than my 2012 Alienware

Snow is falling here and that shovel doesn't clear the driveway by itself lol, so have a great day fellas and I'll try not hurt myself

John Griffin wrote:If you need a laptop because you need to work on the move or on set then you may be able to get a laptop for 2k to 'run' resolve for basic duties such as reviewing footage and doing basic edits but it will struggle to do anything more advanced.

Hey John, video editing is just something that happened by accident- I had no idea I even enjoyed it until I started messing around with Corel Video Studio, so I don't travel for work or anything.

I was actually assembling a decent desktop on New Egg and when I got to the picking out the video card- that's when my plans had to change and a laptop became an option.

I'm gonna keep my eyes open and hope NVIDIA spreads those GPUs around the world again.

Well, time to work the shovel lol.

Take it easy.

Hi.

Normally will I expect that it will cheaper to assemblé a desktop, than to buy a similar laptop with the same CPU and GPU. And in a Desktop will the GPU perform much better, as it not will be designed to slow down, when it become hot.

Last week I read that Quote: 'For the upcoming RTX 3060, the software drivers for this graphics card will automatically limit cryptocoin hashing rates to half – making how much they can earn specifically halved.'

From: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16493/nv ... g-hardware

So lets hope that you can find a RTX 3060 with 12 GB vram on launch day: 25th of February at 6 AM Pacific Time.


Or else wait for next time HP or others, have a deal like the one in my post from last Monday:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=134534

For a HP Desktop with a NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070 (8 GB GDDR6 dedicated) to a total cost from $1489.99

Then problem with HP or other major brand Desktops are, that some of them can be a little difficult to upgrade, as some component like power supplies are manufactured in odd sizes.

Regards Carsten.

Hello,
Coming from Mac world I have bought 3 years ago a MSI GS65 with a GTX1070 to work with daVinci, TouchDesigner and Houdini, part on the road (I make stage video for theater and dance). This machine is able to work quite well to do HD editing with some coloring and few effects.
I just bought a more powerful desktop because I need now to edit 20 hours of multicam recording with 4 4K cameras and 8 track sound and for that the laptop was not sufficient. In France its not difficult to find a RTX 3090 but the price of the desktop is 5000€...
I continue to work with my MSI because its portable and I can do what I need, not so quickly (I need to use sometimes proxy or optimized), not so easely but I can do it and I can transport it on my bike.
Some of the laptop problems:
- very noisy, can be tiring, even without proper sound mixing
- can be very hot with some throtling
- MSI box is very flimsy, coming from macBook Pro it was a bad suprise
The best way would be to test with a friend's computer.