Surface Pro 7 for VP17

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john_dennis wrote on 10/29/2019, 11:34 AM

@Rednroll

Here's my benchmark for the Dell Inspiron 5770.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/21303189

When (if) I (anyone) ever actually start to use this machine, I'll fix the single channel memory problem. This is Patch Tuesday, so I happened to power it up to do system updates. I choose to boot from a SATA SSD, rather than the NVMe drive with the understanding that I can move pagefile.sys and any other work folders to the faster drive if there were to be a bottleneck.

xberk wrote on 10/29/2019, 12:44 PM

Well boys and girls of planet earth ... I ordered the Dell XPS 7590 as follows:

15.6" 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) OLED InfinityEdge Anti-Reflective Non-Touch 100% DCI-P3 400-Nits display
Intel Core i7-9750H (Six-Core, 12M Cache)
32GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB
English Backlit Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader
Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit, 97WHr 6C Battery

I had reservations about the OLED. The word is that the screen is the best out there but that it still may have "burn in" issues down the road. OLED, like Plasma before, has been known for "burn in" issue. I decided that on a laptop this is not too likely compared to a TV where Logos and such can stay on the screen for hours. Anyway ... I wanted it and I threw caution to the wind and became an early adopter of an OLED screen on a laptop.

I will certainly have lots of time during this 4 month long trip to learn the full power of what I just dropped $2400 on ... we shall see .. I don't leave until mid Dec ..

Thanks for all the comments here .. NOW ONWARD into the UNKNOWN !!

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

TheRhino wrote on 10/29/2019, 4:20 PM

The XPS is a much better choice than the Surface Pro for editing - so good choice on that one... I have a Surface Pro provided by an employer & absolutely hate the keyboard & lack of ports... In comparison, I am still using a very old Dell XPS for emailing my part-time studio's clients & managing its website. I just replace the keyboard with another $15 replacement part when it wears out...

Previously the (old) XPS was used for editing SD work on the road. When you are on the road for long stretches, it's nice to take rainy days or days you feel less adventurous & edit some footage while it is still fresh in your mind... To keep stuff safe, I have hidden expensive gear behind secret panels inside our travel trailer or truck. Most thefts are quick grab & go...

Workstation C with $600 USD of upgrades in April, 2021
--$360 11700K @ 5.0ghz
--$200 ASRock W480 Creator (onboard 10G net, TB3, etc.)
Borrowed from my 9900K until prices drop:
--32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3200 ($100 on Black Friday...)
Reused from same Tower Case that housed the Xeon:
--Used VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before mining craze...)
--Noctua Cooler, 750W PSU, OS SSD, LSI RAID Controller, SATAs, etc.

Performs VERY close to my overclocked 9900K (below), but at stock settings with no tweaking...

Workstation D with $1,350 USD of upgrades in April, 2019
--$500 9900K @ 5.0ghz
--$140 Corsair H150i liquid cooling with 360mm radiator (3 fans)
--$200 open box Asus Z390 WS (PLX chip manages 4/5 PCIe slots)
--$160 32GB of G.Skill DDR4 3000 (added another 32GB later...)
--$350 refurbished, but like-new Radeon Vega 64 LQ (liquid cooled)

Renders Vegas11 "Red Car Test" (AMD VCE) in 13s when clocked at 4.9 ghz
(note: BOTH onboard Intel & Vega64 show utilization during QSV & VCE renders...)

Source Video1 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 on motherboard in RAID0
Source Video2 = 4TB RAID0--(2) 2TB M.2 (1) via U.2 adapter & (1) on separate PCIe card
Target Video1 = 32TB RAID0--(4) 8TB SATA hot-swap drives on PCIe RAID card with backups elsewhere

10G Network using used $30 Mellanox2 Adapters & Qnap QSW-M408-2C 10G Switch
Copy of Work Files, Source & Output Video, OS Images on QNAP 653b NAS with (6) 14TB WD RED
Blackmagic Decklink PCie card for capturing from tape, etc.
(2) internal BR Burners connected via USB 3.0 to SATA adapters
Old Cooler Master CM Stacker ATX case with (13) 5.25" front drive-bays holds & cools everything.

Workstations A & B are the 2 remaining 6-core 4.0ghz Xeon 5660 or I7 980x on Asus P6T6 motherboards.

$999 Walmart Evoo 17 Laptop with I7-9750H 6-core CPU, RTX 2060, (2) M.2 bays & (1) SSD bay...

xberk wrote on 10/29/2019, 4:40 PM

>>BTW, my Dell 7570 has dual internal slots for hard drives where I'm assuming the 7590 is likely the same or better. 1 slot is a NVMe M.2 and the other is a SATA III. I also own external USB SSDs but I mostly use my internal SATA III SSD for storing my media files when editing in Vegas. Having a SSD hanging off your USB port, I find to be a bit cumbersome and rather not have to deal with it if I don't have to.

Yes. I checked. The 7590 XPS has a slot for a SATA III SSD .. You need to buy a cable kit to get it installed. This is great to know. But most likely for my needs I'll use and external SSD so I can easily move it to my PC rig when I get home .. I also like having the project on one portable unit for storage after completion... I've been using standard USB 3.0 portable drives that are 5400rpm so the SSD is definitely a step up.

Last changed by xberk on 10/29/2019, 4:40 PM, changed a total of 1 times.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

xberk wrote on 10/29/2019, 4:48 PM

>>The XPS is a much better choice than the Surface Pro for editing

Thanks @TheRhino .. Easy choice once I got over worries about an extra 2 pounds or so .. The screen size did it for me .. I know I can work on the 15.6" screen .. Larger screen was a must for editing ... all the ports were a big factor too .. The whole thing on the XPS 15 7590 hit my sweet spot except the PRICE and the OLED choice? But I went for it .. We shall soon see how it works out.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Abs72 wrote on 10/29/2019, 5:33 PM

Going on a long trip. Seriously thinking of buying a Surface Pro 7 for VP17 editing. Does anyone know a reason I should not (besides the price)?

I have a surface pro 5 and I used to render on the Surface pro, however the issues you will have is very slow rendering and very bad quality preview screen. I had the i5, 8gig ram and 256gig of SSD.

 

Much better editing on the Dell XPS 15 but also the preview is not very clear. I also used to render on the Dell xps as I own both laptops

 

Hope this helps

xberk wrote on 10/29/2019, 6:24 PM

>> Dell XPS 15 but also the preview is not very clear.

@Abs72 .. Not sure what you mean by "not very clear" ??

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Abs72 wrote on 10/29/2019, 6:32 PM

>> Dell XPS 15 but also the preview is not very clear.

@Abs72 .. Not sure what you mean by "not very clear" ??

The quality of the video preview window would not be good quality. It would be at best draft preview. When selecting a better quality preview its not going to be a smooth preview and sometimes its lags or skips frames.

When you select the Geforce GFX card for preview, the laptop will get very hot.

When you select the the CPU GFX for preview the quality is poor.

To be honest if you can deal with the lag and skipping frames in preview then its a good investment.

The XPS I have is the 9560, intel i7 and 32GB or ram with 1tb SSD.

The latest model has a better GeForce GFX chipset but I never tested it on Vegas.

 

xberk wrote on 10/29/2019, 10:40 PM

@Abs72Hmmmmmmmm ... I was hoping VP17 would run at full frame rate at "Best (auto) preview setting, at least on HiDef 1920 x 1080 stuff and at least run full frame rate at "Preview" for 4K media ...

XPS 15's are known for getting hot as the fans are underneath, trapping the heat ..

I'm wondering would a thermal pad like this help?

Last changed by xberk on 10/29/2019, 10:41 PM, changed a total of 2 times.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

Abs72 wrote on 10/29/2019, 11:44 PM

I dont think you will get what you want from the preview. Maybe if you install the Geforce studio drivers it might help. Dell XPS is expensive but great laptop. See if they have a money back guarantee, buy it and see for yourself. If it does not work send it back.

 

I never used a Thermal Pad as the laptop was able to handle the heat it was producing.

xberk wrote on 11/1/2019, 10:34 AM

Got my new Dell XPS 15 7590 laptop yesterday. So far so good! ... Smooth playback with 4K files from new RX100 VII .. full frame rate on BEST preview. I have not done any long timelines (say an hour) yet.

I set the GPU to the Nvidia 1650 card that comes with the XPS and the dynamic ram to 4000 for now.

What surprised me was that I've run my tests off my old USB 3.0 Toshiba Portable drive (5400 rpm). So even from the slower portable drive I'm getting full frame rate playback .. HAPPY SO FAR.

 

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

rraud wrote on 11/8/2019, 10:08 AM

I have a Dell XPS 9550, 32GB RAM, four core Intel i7 6700HD, GeForce 960M,.1TB SSD, it's pretty snappy and has a real nice back-lighted keyboard. I got in 2018 from one of B&H's 'daily deals 'Saved me about $700 off the regular B&H price. I recall I paid about $1.7k. It did not have the typical amount of bloatware that is usually per-installed on new PCs.

Rednroll wrote on 11/8/2019, 12:57 PM

I have a Dell XPS 9550, 32GB RAM, four core Intel i7 6700HD, GeForce 960M,.1TB SSD, it's pretty snappy and has a real nice back-lighted keyboard. I got in 2018 from one of B&H's 'daily deals 'Saved me about $700 off the regular B&H price. I recall I paid about $1.7k. It did not have the typical amount of bloatware that is usually per-installed on new PCs.


I know the XPS version of the Dell laptops are suppose to be the top of their line but when comparing specs of the Dell XPS vs their standard Inspiron series, I had a hard time identifying and justifying what I was additionally getting with the XPS series over their standard Inspiron series offerings. Since I'm more of a tech guy, and when doing spec comparisons, I felt that I could upgrade the standard Inspiron and get better components over a similar speced XPS. For example, I got my Inspiron 7570 2 years ago and at the time it had a 1TB standard 5400 RPM HDD and a similar XPS had an 250GB SSD instead at a significantly higher price premium for that SSD. The XPS also had 16GB of RAM with dual 8GB DIMMS , 2 total slots for ram where the Inspiron had a single 8GB DIMM also with 2 total slots. Knowing I wanted to upgrade to 32GB of total RAM like yourself, the standard Inspiron seemed like the better value to me, since I would only be discarding 1 8GB Dimm that came pre-installed instead of 2.

I pulled the HDD and replaced it with a 500GB Samsung 960 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD which was the top of the line SSD at the time, over whatever SSD Dell was shipping with their XPS series. When all was said and done, I had a higher speced PC than the XPS equivalent and overall I paid significantly less for it. As configured from Dell, I paid $700 for my Inspiron 7570 over 2 years ago and it has a handwriting FHD touch screen display. By the time I finished upgrading the components which included (2) 16GB Ballistix Sport SoDIMMs, (1) 500GB Samsung M.2 SSD, (1) 1TB Sandisk Extreme SSD, I was at around $1200 total with extra parts to sell if I wanted.

My 7570 came with an i7-8550U CPU, where I know not an Apples to Apples comparison but when I compare the CPU specs to your XPS which is one of the more important/expensive part components, Your XPS from 1 year ago came with a slower speed older Gen i7 6700H, where I'm thinking you may have over paid at $1.7K even with the B&H sale.

CPU comparisons for my $1000 less cost Inspiron.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8550U-vs-Intel-Core-i7-6700HQ/m320742vsm34954

So I guess what I'm saying is that if you're a tech person who is able to open up the laptop and do simple SSD and RAM swaps, I'm thinking Dell's Inspiron series may be a better value purchase over their XPS series if you can find an Inspiron with similar CPU/GPU specs which then allows you to purchase higher end performing SSD and RAM components with those cost savings.

I also found a good sale on my 7570 Inspiron at $700 from Sam's club, where direct from Dell it was $1100 which helped also.

Just something to consider, buying into Dell's "XPS" branding may not always be your best value option, where I would recommend not overlooking their consumer/business grade Inspiron series. At the end of the day most laptops today are built on an SoC (Systems on a chip) architecture where what tends to differentiate them are their included display, GPU, included RAM and Storage drives where the RAM and Storage drives can be easily upgraded and swapped.

I wish the GPU could be upgraded on a laptop and is something I regret now. That was something I minimized when purchasing mine because I knew that's not very important for doing mainly audio work, but here I am now 2 years later doing more video editing work and am kind of kicking myself for that decision. However, taking advantage of this proxy stuff in Vegas will help out with that.