Please recommend graphics card for Dell notebook

[Schottlandru]

Hello there,
I am planning on upgrading my system soon, going from my HP notebook to probably a Dell 6700 (I want a powerful 17" business machine with docking station for the studio).
There is the choice between
- AMD FirePro M6000 Mobility Pro with 2 GB GDDR5
- NVIDIA Quadro K4000M with 4GB GDDR5
- NVIDIA Quadro K3000M with 2GB GDDR5

Is there any card you could recommend or warn me to stay clear of? I'm thinking about the K4000M because of the 4GB, but found an older thread recommending lower video RAM due to it being split off from system RAM - I guess this is an old situation though and with 64bit OS that shouldn't be an issue I guess?
AMD supports several displays via docking station, nVidia not sure, the Dell techs are checking that for me.

Avid recommend nVidia but I found another old thread with an AvidTechSupport saying they've seen more issues with nVidia as opposed to ATI (AMD now).

Any ideas appreciated (oh and should you have other business notebooks worth looking at also)!


Thanks for your help,
Schottl

[albee1952]

You won't like my advice but I have to offer it anyway. Dell's in general are a crapshoot so offer up the exact model number and see if maybe another DUC user is having success with it. The ATI recommendation is likely from way back in time and if I had to move on this machine, I would go for the NVIDIA Quadro K3000M with 2GB GDDR5. Unless the laptop is priced really good, I would be shopping for a used MacBookPro i7. If you find one with both FW800 and Thunderbolt, Apple has a TB to FW adapter cable, so its like getting dual FW ports. Then there are some Thunderbolt drives on the market and the UA Apollo interface....food for thought anyway

BTW, do you REALLY need a laptop?

[Schottlandru]

Albee, thank you very much for pointing this out.

First of all - yes I'd prefer to continue working on a mobile system as I've gotten used to working this way through being on the road often in the last few years, both job-wise (bringen my system in to different studio setups) as well as privately (travelling a lot, working away from home etc.)
So far I have a HP nx9420 and a docking station in my basement studio, so I walk in the door, plug it onto the docking station and have mouse/keyboard/2nd screen/interface etc. hooked up within seconds.

That is kind of one "rather no MacBook Pro" argument for me - why don't they offer docking solutions?

Second is that I have quite a lot in terms of Windows software, both "office tools" as well as plugins etc. that I use on Windows (probably not all of them have OSX versions), I no the OS an can tweak it etc. I don't hate OSX, I use it when working at other studios no problem, I just don't see the benefit for myself, no offense meant.

So I'm looking for a powerful, docking-station (i.e. business laptop) capable, rather quiet (Dell Precision seem to have dual cooling, read somewhere better than HP elitebook) system with i7 quadcore and 17" screen (using it as my main screen too). Lenovo only have 15" at the moment.

Then there is HP (my old system is still going very well, but win7 GPU drivers are a workaround thing with the graphics chip and I'd like to upgrade performance), Samsung, Lenovo as well as ADK/Alienware/other gaming systems, but without docking station options as far as I see.

Difficult. Thanks for any tips though!! (Maybe HP 8770w elitebook after all? Though no hdmi on the laptop itself, only via docking station...)

Schottl

[EGS]

The below HP laptop rig is working well for me; it's powerful and stable. I spent a lot of time uninstalling all the HP bloatware, and did all the Avid recommended optimizations. Here's the specs:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...p?EdpNo=286121

[Schottlandru]

Albee, any particular reason why you favour the 2GB KM3000 over the 4GB KM4000 nVidia card?

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by Schottlandru

Albee, any particular reason why you favour the 2GB KM3000 over the 4GB KM4000 nVidia card?

I may be off base here, but I was under the impression that the larger graphics memory would draw more from the system RAM. This may be incorrect(especially with a 64 bit OS), and the 4GB card just seems like total overkill to me. EGS's hands-on experience would carry a lot of weight for me

[Schottlandru]

Yes I thought that was a 32bit OS problem...
Not 100% sure though.
Yes the HP thing looks good, but I've been reading up on DPC latency issues and all models seem to have them one way or another (also MacBooks). Mostly wlan adapter, sometimes GPU throttling, notebook battery AHCI device... so I hope to be able to tackle it.
Oh and with similar specs the HP is way more expensive :-\