Best laptop for Vegas Pro? HP EliteBook 8730w?

Jøran Toresen wrote on 5/8/2010, 12:06 PM

Welcome back, Lars!

Jøran

LarsHD wrote on 5/8/2010, 12:44 PM

Thanks Jøran :)

amendegw wrote on 5/8/2010, 1:46 PM

The "best" laptop - obviously a very subjective question. I'm happy with the following:

Dell Studio 15 Laptop
Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz
4GB DDR3
512MB ATI Graphics
500GB 7200rpm Drive
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

Rendertest-HDV gave me a 2:57 using V9.0c 32bit (which is about the fastest of any laptop in the Rendertest thread).

I probably should have ordered the 8GB memory. I also opted for the 15.6" screen for portability, but others may want larger screens for more "real estate". I wonder about the ATI graphics card - will a future version of Vegas support nVidia hardware acceleration? This is certainly not a problem now.

I would certainly recommend the Intel i7 processor with as much memory as you can afford. Also a 7200 rpm hard drive.

Good Luck!
...Jerry

warriorking wrote on 5/8/2010, 6:24 PM

Excellent results as well on my Dell Studio 17 with the i7core...Vegas 9d 64Bit, Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, and the extra room on the 17" screen is really nice....

Dell Studio 1747
17.3 1600x900p HD
i7Core 720QM 1.6Ghz - 2.8Ghz Turbo Boost
4Gig DDR3 1066
1Gig 4650 ATI Video
8x Dual layer +R/-R
2-500Gig 7200 Hds

farss wrote on 5/8/2010, 9:12 PM

HP have some very nice laptops. i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 7200 RPM HDD and Dreamcolor display. No idea what the things cost but short of a "luggable" I can't think of anything that would run Vegas or anything else better. Make certain you get a laptop with an Express34 slot. AJA have a nice, cheap i/o box that will use that if you want HD/SD SDI and HDMI I/O.

Bob.

LarsHD wrote on 5/9/2010, 1:30 AM

Thanks for good suggestions.

I wonder, the eSATA connection on some of these laptops (the HP for instance), how can I use this to hook up an external RAID-0 drive setup.

RAID-0 seems unavoidable if I want to run MXF 35 Mbps 1920x1080 and have the drive deliver two streams (for dissolves etc).

Are there available solutions for an external RAID-0 drive set up (2 drives in once enclosure) that can then be connected via the single eSATA connector on the side of the laptop?

Lars

Kevin R wrote on 5/9/2010, 1:55 AM

Lars,

How long are your programs? There are single SSDs that could keep up with two streams. Some laptops allow two internal drives.

LarsHD wrote on 5/9/2010, 3:02 AM

It would be a smarter solution indeed I agree. I tried the Intel X25 a few months ago, and noted the performance went down after a weeks use, don't know why, so I returned them to the store. But in general, yes, using SSD's does indeed seem like a better solution than logging around 2 x big hard drives... As you say, some laptops have space for 2 drives now. And even if they don't - running a light cool SSD via the eSATA connector would still be quite ok.

Lars

Kevin R wrote on 5/9/2010, 2:53 PM

Intel released new SSD firmware to address that problem in December:
Intel SSD Downloads

A single SSD can be shared with the OS even as you don't have slowing from fragmentation or from reading/writing to the inner tracks of a non-empty drive.

Earl_J wrote on 5/9/2010, 4:07 PM

Hello Lars...
Dell owns Alienware now...
I like their speed and multi-tasking options for gaming that can also get implemented for video...
Here's one with two 500GB internal HDs ... for around $3K ...

Alienware

Just a thought. . .

Until that time... Earl J.

Dan Sherman wrote on 5/10/2010, 1:30 PM

Anybody said goodbye to their desktop in exchange for editing with a laptop.

farss wrote on 5/10/2010, 2:26 PM

"Are there available solutions for an external RAID-0 drive set up (2 drives in once enclosure) that can then be connected via the single eSATA connector on the side of the laptop?"

Yes, G-Tech and others make such boxes.

If I was in the market for a laptop I'd certainly give serious consideration to a HP unit with the Dreamcolor LCD. They're certainly not cheap however a decent LCD that can be properly calibrated sound attractive to me. That's assuming you were going to be using the laptop as your sole tool for production including color grading.

Bob.

Earl_J wrote on 5/10/2010, 2:56 PM

Yep; I agree Bob...

it'll be a long time before I give up a desktop to edit strictly on one laptop... grin...

Until that time... Earl J.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 5/10/2010, 2:57 PM

These guys make top of the line notebooks at some of the best prices available.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/

I've never used their machines ( because I invest more in desktops for workhorses ).

It is one of the only places I know where you can build a laptop with the following specs ( granted it comes in at around $5600.

Display 17" Wide Viewing Angles WUXGA LCD with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1200)

Video & Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M Graphics with 1GB GDDR3 Video Memory

CPU Processor Intel® Core™ i7-980X Processor Extreme Edition ( 12MB L3 Cache, 3.33GHz, 6.4GT/sec QPI ) [$820.00]

Thermal Compound Stock Standard Thermal Compound

Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition [$50.00]

Memory 12GB Triple Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz - 3 X 4GB [$425.00]

RAID Storage Options Non-RAID Storage

Primary Hard Disk Drive 160GB Intel SATA2 Solid State Disk Drive [$450.00]

2nd Hard Disk Drive 160GB Intel SATA2 Solid State Secondary Disk Drive [$515.00]

3rd Hard Disk Drive 160GB Intel SATA2 Solid State 3rd Disk Drive [$515.00]

Optical Drive 6X BD-R Blu-ray Burner/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software [$275.00]

Wireless Network Card Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module

Bluetooth Internal Bluetooth V2.1 Module

Primary Battery Smart Li-ION Battery Pack (12 Cells)

MCE Remote Control Compact Media Center Remote Control & IR Receiver, fits in Express Card slot [$45.00]

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office Ready with Free 60-Day Trial

Warranty Sager 3 Year Limited Parts and Labor Warranty [$269.00]

Carrying Bag Standard Carrying Bag

Mind you, that some of these options may actually be cheaper buying and putting them in yourself, and if you do any 3D animation or modeling, that GFX card is insane for a laptop to have.

Dave

Bill Ravens wrote on 5/10/2010, 4:45 PM

FWIW...

I love my HP 8730w, win 7 64 bit, 8Gb RAM with an SSD boot drive. However, be aware that the SATA port will not support port multipliers, i.e., RAID configurations. In order to use a RAID on my system, I use an Addonics PCIe card in the PCIe bus slot.

Alf Hanna wrote on 5/10/2010, 10:09 PM

Just bought the Samsung R580 w/4 GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, i5, eSATA port, etc. for just under $900. This runs Vegas just fine, and I add a SATA ext. drive for the video files for AVCHD.

farss wrote on 5/11/2010, 1:14 AM

From what I read of the G-Tech specs they use an Oxford 936 RAID controller in the box. I assume that means to the laptop it simply appears as a single drive. The specs don't make this overly clear though.
Are these the kind of units you were referring to or something else?

Bob.

Bill Ravens wrote on 5/11/2010, 5:17 AM

yeah, unfortunately. whether it's a "port multiplier" or an external RAID controller like the oxford, the intel SATA firmware that shipped with the 64 bit OS can't access the RAID0 configuration without choking. Upon plugging the RAID drive into the SATA port, I get a message saying that the OS can't access a port multiplier configuration. IN reality, the OS sees the RAID0, and can access the files, but I/O is extremely slow...like 3MBps.

I checked with HP Customer Support and they confirmed it was a firmware issue. I hope they'll fix this with a firmware update. The motherboard is an Intel mobile PM45 with an ICH9M I/O controller.

here's a reference:
http://forums13.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?admit=109447627+1273580241059+28353475&threadId=1354858