Blackmagic Forum

Hi there,

I couldn't find a topic specifically covering this as pretty much every post about a laptop for Resolve always ends with recommendations to go with anything that has a dedicated GPU.
This however seems like most people are looking for something that can handle a proper workflow with Resolve and some Fusion or even as a main machine.

In my case, I'm looking for a laptop whose primary purpose won't be Resolve but want to make sure I get something that can handle it, even if it means using optimized media and converting video files beforehand. Most of the footage I have and do is with a GoPro Hero8 (so h.265 in 4k60 and 2k most of the time) at this stage.
I'm building (read waiting for stock and non scalper prices) a proper video editing rig with a 5950x and 3080/3090 to go with Resolve studio where most of the editing will be done, however since stock is abysmal I'm looking at getting a laptop upgrade first in the mean time.
That means i'll be using it for editing most likely for the next 6 months but not that much after.

So with that in mind, are laptops with Intel iris Xe and 16GB of ram good enough to do the job (no fusion but 4k footage) or should I really look at something with a dedicated gpu? (i'm not a mac guy so the M1 macbooks are out of the picture)

I'm looking at something like the LG gram 16 or XPS 13, which clearly is underwhelming if it was purely for video editing, but as a stop gap to a 5950x/3080 that would mean I can spend £1300 on a laptop like the LG Gram rather than £1800 for the zephyrus g14 (which has pretty much the perfect specs, Ryzen 5900HS 32GB ram and RTX3060) and use that £500 difference to potentially go from 64GB ram to 128GB on the main rig...

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 Labtop, 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.

Regards Carsten.

Not to forget a power socket nearby

Carsten Sellberg wrote: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 Labtop, 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.

Regards Carsten.

Thanks Carsten,
I understand all of that make no mistake, but I'm referring to needing a laptop in the interim whilst I build an editing rig (~£5k) proper with the absolute best in the market (Ryzen 5950x + RTX 3090 + 64GB of ram and multiple NVMe drives).
Once this build is complete I won't need the laptop for anything video editing related, I just need it to run Resolve for basic editing in the meantime.
So my question essentially is "Will Resolve run on Intel based laptops with Iris Xe graphics rather than a dedicated gpu like a 1660ti/2060/3060 and if so what do I need to bear in mind when doing light editing work with it?"

I know full well it won't be a good experience but an Iris based laptop means saving £500 that can go into better components for the desktop or towards a camera...