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    Dell Precision or XPS or Alienware 15 ? (3D Rendering power)

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by omegear, Feb 12, 2015.

  1. omegear

    omegear Newbie

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    Hello Everyone,
    I'm a digital-artist looking for a new 15' Mobile Workstation and I mainly use :
    • KeyShot (render)
    • Vue (openGL Viewport + heavy Render)
    • Z-Brush (modeling)
    • Photoshop CS6
    Everyone talk about Quadro as a great card for 3D softwares but does it render faster than a gaming card ?
    I read somewhere that the only parameters to look for 3D render is the Cuda. The M3800, with the Quadro K1100 has around 360CUDA cores while the Alienware15 has more than 1200 with 970GTX.

    So I'm asking you, why is quadro better for rendering ? I can't find any serious comparatives test on that, especially for my softwares. I'm really afraid to invest into a M3800 then figure out that the drivers aren't optimized for my 3d softwares as they only talk about 3dsmax & maya which I don't use.

    What are your tought on that ?


    P.S : Excuse my english it's not my native language
     
    omegear, Feb 12, 2015
    #1
  2. baii

    baii Sone

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    baii, Feb 12, 2015
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  3. omegear

    omegear Newbie

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    Hey Baii,

    What do you suggest as Mobile workstation for my work then ? I'm curious
     
    omegear, Feb 12, 2015
    #3
  4. CuriousN

    CuriousN Notebook Evangelist

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    geforce vs quadro
     
    CuriousN, Feb 13, 2015
    #4
    alexhawker likes this.
  5. shea2812

    shea2812 Notebook Consultant

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    From your choices better go for the sturdier M4800. They keyboard deck is just that much better than the other two.
     
    shea2812, Feb 23, 2015
    #5
  6. manville140

    manville140 Notebook Enthusiast

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    M4800. Minimum SSD drive and k2100. The m3800 probably will not be enough power but is a much nicer, lighter looking machine.

    Alienware 15 is more for gaming and not for what you are looking at doing. Plus you get a 3 year warranty with the precision M4800.
     
    manville140, Mar 19, 2015
    #6
  7. tijo

    tijo Sacred Blame

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    A note on Quadro vs GTX, on a given architecture, the quadros usually do perform at rendering and GPGPU functions. However, if you are comparing different architectures, it can be a whole other story. From the benchmarks I have seen, the 900 series trounces Kepler Quadros at the high end of the spectrum because the architecture is just better.

    Still, there are other reasons to want a workstation, namely warranty.
     
    tijo, Mar 19, 2015
    #7
  8. alexhawker

    alexhawker Spent Gladiator

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    Or order with a HDD and replace with your own SSD.
     
    alexhawker, Mar 19, 2015
    #8
  9. dblkk

    dblkk Notebook Evangelist

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    My personal observations regarding GPU usage and photoshop/vegas pro, is that GPU barely gets used, and if/when it only releases some of the load off the CPU, maybe 10%.

    But, have found that stronger spec'd geoforce cards perform better than lower spec'd quaddro cards. And by spec's, for the price of the quadro you'll get a superior geoforce.

    AutoDesk software favors AMD mobile or desktop, but otherwise quadro. Solidworks quadro. But i had 880m 8GB in my MSI, went to quadro, noticed minimal difference in Photoshop. And both the 880m and quadro are pretty top end (at the time) for mobile.
     
    dblkk, Mar 28, 2015
    #9