Laptop for Ultimate?

[sean shannon]

I am running Ultimate Perpetual HDX on a PC with 64 i/o in a rack in my studio. For traveling when I drive my van, I bring my desktop PC and a Focusrite interface and mics for mixing and vocal overdubs. That's fine for when that is doable, but obviously I can't fly with my PC. My commercial room is a Westmere mac, and my mix lab is a PC, so I am used to going back and forth from PC to mac. I'm fine with mac or PC on a portable system, my daughter has a HP ZBook G2 that runs Studio, and she gets a lot done on it, but she's not running lots of plugins or mixing. I will need to mix and use what I use without running into bottlenecks if possible.

[BScout]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Apple is well into a transition from Intel to Apple Silicon. A wild guess but I expect Intel Macs to stop receiving macOS updates in ~< 2 years and maybe the same for Pro Tools updates.

I think we'll be looking at least 5 years after the last macOS the supports Intel for Pro Tools to stop updates for Intel. Since Apple is behind on their Apple Silicon conversion, we've got a fairly long time still.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by BScout

I think we'll be looking at least 5 years after the last macOS the supports Intel for Pro Tools to stop updates for Intel. Since Apple is behind on their Apple Silicon conversion, we've got a fairly long time still.

We'll see. My money is still on a faster transition. It's all cost and downside for Apple to not move fast and to a large extent they set the pace here. Yep supply issues have messed them up, especially with them still not having killed off the Intel Mac Pro. But they are still hammering away.

The slower Avid goes the more they end up having to support more disparity in macOS releases, and I don't expect macOS releases to slow down... but I do expect Apple to be aggressive about stopping new Intel macOS releases (and maybe concurrently dropping Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon). And for Avid in that environment... for a company that is challenged in shipping stuff today.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe put another way I'd not make big decisions on assumptions there are many years left of new Avid product releases on Intel Macs.

[sean shannon]

I am looking at this: i7, 32G RAM, 1TB SSD drive. Thoughts?

https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp...imilarProducts

[TOM@METRO]

To me, it looks pretty good for the price.

[sean shannon]

Yeah, it looks good! I'm just concerned about what the Avid requirements page says - i9 or Xeon and NVidia being required for Ultimate

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...m-Requirements

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by sean shannon

Yeah, it looks good! I'm just concerned about what the Avid requirements page says - i9 or Xeon and NVidia being required for Ultimate

https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...m-Requirements

That's a somewhat meaningless (but still can be useful for what it is) statement from Avid. There is really nothing in Ultimate that has any other needs than Standard/Studio. It's all the same software and the Ultimate i9 requirement is more a statement reflecting Avid's expectation of the type of use an Ultimate user will put on a system. In your case you are doing low end stuff and want to not spend a pile of cash, so an i7 laptop is not an issue.

And for out uses an i7 is an i9 is some Xenon models, all the same chip with different features and cores disabled. It's not like there is some specific technical difference that Pro Tools relies on some feature on an i9. Modern embedded GPUs are way faster/less problem than they used to be.

If I was going to configure a laptop for my needs, sure i9, Nvidia mobile GPU, 2-4TB of SSD, 64-128GB, probably a Lenovo, and I'd spend ~$4k+ and expect it to last 4+ years, because I like to hang onto stuff. But you have very different needs/goals.

One thing I'd check on this laptop is the internal drive is NVMe/PCIe... the specs say it is, and I hope that is 4 x PCIe 3 lane to the drive and ideally the drive is an M.2 card that is user replaceable... may not be with a thin laptop like this. If you can find a teardown review they should cover that.. but again, at the price this looks interesting.

[EGS]

Dell XPS with Intel 12th gen i7 or i9

[sean shannon]

I am looking at that now. 64G RAM, touch screen, i9. It's 3 times the price of what I linked above, but it will certainly do the job for mixing.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop...configurations

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by sean shannon

I am looking at that now. 64G RAM, touch screen, i9. It's 3 times the price of what I linked above, but it will certainly do the job for mixing.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop...configurations

That links to a configuration with 32GB ram and a smaller, non-touch screen, at $2,649.00.