17 inch laptops dying?

I work in the media field, working with large 36-80mp photo's and we are moving into 4k video and need mobile editing solutions.

We liked Alienware until they stopped being "upgradable" and now are looking for 17 inch laptops, with raid configurations for hard drives, blu ray burners and 17 inch 4k or 5k displays.

It has become hard because it looks like everyone is pushing 15 inch laptops with no power because all they want you to do is stay glued to web browsers and microsoft office.

And these laptops become paper weights when they die because nothing can be replaced or upgraded.

When are we going to get 17 inch laptop solutions with 4k or 5k displays? We build our own towers for the desks and really heavy lifting but try taking a full tower pc and 4 30 inch monitors with you on the road unless you have a tour bus. It isn't going to happen.

 

Lenovo has a high res workstation coming out with the Thinkpad P series and as soon as I can get my paws on one I will abuse it.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/08/10/lenovo-thinkpad-p50-and-p70/

17" high res screens are just finally starting to appear, and I suspect not many will be super accurate either same as we had with older 17" units.

for all my editing work I still run 1080 but do any of my editing of 4K with color work on an older M6700 Covet edition and HP 17" workstations with 10bit color @ a hair under aRGB gamut range.

my main 3 on the road units for on site editing are:
M6700 Covet, 32GB 2T HDD, 2T SSD & 1GB SSD - Premiercolor Screen
Elitebook 8770W, 32GB 2T Spinner and a pair of 1T SSD's - DC2 Screen
HP Zbook 17 Gen 2, 32GB 6T of SSD, ( 3X Samsung 850 ) - DC2 Screen

and then I just pack an advanced docking station and a pair of 10 bit external screens mounted in my van if I need the extra screen space. otherwise I undock and just run the onboard LCD and have it right up with the shooting crews.

Used to haul around a Mac Pro and rMBP's but that is a cause in futility.
Biggest thing with me is I cant tolerate having units gone for long so I almost always stick with Dell, HP and Lenovo workstations with a 5 year NBD onsite warranty/service option.

 

I think that P70 would be soldered everything, we'll see. Also it's not like Lenovo hasn't screwed their last 17" before - the W701 - its MXM implementation is proprietary.

The upcoming Clevo P870DM is the only answer so far. Maybe its little brother (as in only 1 GPU and most likely thinner and lighter) P77xDM as well.

 

I cant speak for the OP but I have a few reservations on the 870DM ( I have been watching this Clevo as well and have its older Xeon desktop brother )

1: I know in my workflow and software there is no way I can cut back on FP64, Im stuck with quadro's and they are an unknown I have tried 980m's on heavy linear renders and color work, the 32:1 is still pretty damn horrid

2: as I said above, if they can promise me a repair in 2-3 days sure, otherwise I need NBD that only the big 3 will give me. Downtime is money and sometimes lost contracts.

3: units with G-sync are a bloody nightmare in some NLE's as for some reason the drivers go insane even when you turn it off

4: the guys over @ Ti are giving indications the color accuracy is great for gaming, but not so good for those of us needing accuracy especially in the blues and yellows


Bit OT but Triturbo, glad to see another 8740W user still around here, I thought Charles and I were becoming the last slowly, and I will have to check out your upgrade guide. Mine ahs been My hackintosh MacPro for FCP for a year now.

 

Not sure if you heard the News but Lenovo is a BIG MALWARE installer. So I would advise anyone looking for Lenovo to stay away from them.

 

IDK, I get the smallest storage option possible, remove the storage option and then install my own SSD's and mSata's that are 1TB or now 2TB.... So what ever was on the manufacturer's SSD or HD will be gone and then we build out the software from the OS to the apps, it takes longer, but none of their junk is on the pc at that point.

 

As I said, you might not get the upgradeability you are expecting out of P70. Better wait for some reviews first. HP and DELL are coming with new Mobile Workstations, but most likely the CPUs would be soldered, the GPUs are to be confirmed.

1. Well the new Quadros are Maxwell based as well, so they might not be awesome as well. Waiting for the benchmarks.

2. True, depends on the reseller, but I guess no one provides 2-3 days, could be wrong.

3. No comment, since I'm "a bit" hateful towards nGreedia lately.

4. Probably that's the reason why there are grey-scale issues with the 8740w's DreamColor when upgraded with 980m - not deep enough color rendering - better performance. There are also issues with M17x-R2's RGB LED.

There are still some active users, after all it's THE BEST 16:10 machine out there all things considered (it has its flaws, but I'm working hard to solve most, if not all, of them). Was it easy to convert it to Mac? I'm running one in a VM, since I'm not heavy on it.

 

There's info here about Dell's new Precision workstations.

John

 

Glad the Premiercolor is back in the Precision 7710 and UHD to boot.

4K full aRGB 10 bit on a W7170M GPU .. biggest CPU I can get ... I see a 7710 in the future for me for Premier Pro

info link from Johns posting
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/...ops-are-smaller-more-powerful-better-looking/

 

I wonder if it's a special panel (as it was the case up until now), or just a fancy name for the same panel that everyone else would get (4K that covers 100% sRGB, it is only one panel that fits the description for now).

 

That Clevo is crazy. What other laptop has 6 USB ports and two Ethernet jacks? Not to mention the desktop CPUs. Still, it is a fair question what the GPU upgradeability would be. Hopefully they get MXM 3.0b correct and it's truly upgradeable.

Relevant to the OP, which of these (Lenovo P70/Clevo) have confirmed optical drives, if any? I saw that the 15" Dell does not, and the Clevo I don't see it listed, but I haven't seen a definite confirmation that the 17" Lenovo and Clevo don't have an optical option. May have missed it though. Seems like there ought to be enough space in a 17" to have an optical option as least, even if it comes at the cost of a third hard drive or something like that.

Looking forward to the reviews of these new models, both professional and user. Going to stick with the 8740w for awhile, but definitely hoping one of these proves to be a successor that gets everything except 16:10 right.

 

Premiercolor will be a nice upgrade, but what about this stupid 16gb ram limit? Shouldn't performance/ workstation laptops support 64gb of ram by now? There were 16gb so-dimms in DDR3 that never came out..... It would be nice to get 64gb of ram on these laptops.

I can only imagine.....

• I7 hex core processor (mobile)
• 64gb DDR 3 or DDR 4
• 2 x 2TB Samsung Evo 850 Pro mSata's or M.2 Msata's
• 2 x 2TB Samsung Evo 850 Pro SSD's in the hard drive bays (Raid 0)
• 1 x 128gb Quad Layer 12x blu-ray burner
• USB 3.1 and or Thunderbolt
• 4 mini Display port connections (Eyefinity)
• 17inch Premiercolor UHD Display (4k)
• 3x3 MIMO wireless AC
• 1 x HDMI 2.x In
• 1 x HDMI 2.x Out
• Video card of choice
• SD Card reader/writer
• Customizable back lit keyboard
• Blue tooth 4.x or 5 if it is available

 

64GB of RAM would be nice on workstations indeed. Your dream laptop would be awesome, but it would cost more than my house is worth too. The SSD cost alone would about buy you a small new car. I want the Oak Ridge National Laboratory supercomputer myself in 5 lb laptop form and 17" screen size.

 

Actually Crucial and Micron have low density* 16GB DDR3 modules, but they are prohibitively expensive to give them a go. I think that they'll work. Back in the PM965 days (yeah, quite some time ago), that's how I got my Acer over the 4GB limit - 2 low density 4GB modules (8GB total).

*Better compatibility, unlike the I'M modules you probably think about.

 

If that' true you're not only stuck with Quadros, you're stuck with Fermi. The FP64 is a hardware limitation, switching to the Quadro driver won't do any magic.

In reality your problem probably has little to do with FP64. Rendering software rarely touch FP64.

 

You and I will get along very well

This is the hard part. Optical drives are for the most part dead in laptops, because consumers generally feel that they're worthless as "who even uses a disc anymore?".

YOU AND I WILL GET ALONG VERY WELL. You should meet @Mr. Fox too.

You should actually ask @Prema as he has been eyeing those for a LONG time and I believe is getting a 4K display soon.

You too, I like your desire to abuse good laptops =D.

I highly doubt they will be nearly as good. Look at all these crappy 6-bit colour, 60% NTSC gamut IPS panels with 25ms response times that are coming out and everybody is lapping them up. There've been higher quality TN panels for ages that don't sell enough and get discontinued.... but slap the name IPS and 4K on it? WANT WANT WANT. Even if it's piss-poor quality.

As @Mr.Koala said, Kepler and Maxwell cannot do double precision. Only the Titan/Titan Black on Kepler had the capability. nVidia has designed their gaming-class cards to perform exactly in the current technology spec of gaming, and it is currently biting them in their behinds right now where DX12 calling for Async compute and parallel processing proves that Maxwell has very limited capabilities to do it.... because nobody used it when Maxwell was designed. Look at Kepler too: the cards just fail above 1080p. Their entire line was designed for 1080p, and above that they lose performance. Maxwell does great at 1440p (better than Kepler), but at 4K they still lose out, despite nVidia claiming they've been "pushing hard" for 4K since Kepler's time. AMD's "gaining" on nVidia in GPU-bottlenecked scenarios when you raise the resolution is proof of the fact that they designed their cards to handle high resolutions from the start of GCN before higher resolutions was even a thing; and that they've been more ready for low level APIs than nVidia's marketing promises can ever hope to keep up with.

I also find it's downright INSULTING that the quadro cards are quite literally the GeForce cards with just different drivers (that you pay THOUSANDS more for). In fact, they're so "exactly the same cards" that if you pop off a single capacitor (or is it a resistor?) on Kepler GPUs, you quite literally turn the cards into their quadro equivalent as far as drivers can tell. You'd need their Tesla-level GPUs for double precision and whatnot.

Only their consumer products. Their workstation products don't deal with that trash. No workstation laptops from any company deals with useless bloatware and all that jazz.

Since the SM-A series (possibly since the SM series too; not sure) Clevo has hugely improved on their MXM support. They'll usually require a BIOS update to have the cards be named in the system, but for the most part the cards are plug and play. Unless MXM 3.0b is discarded from Pascal onward, they'll be upgrade-able.

The Clevos don't. I would not be surprised if the Lenovos didn't either.

Only the lower-end Clevos like the N1xxRD models have optical drives. The P6xxRx models are too thin to keep an optical drive and their other I/O ports, and the P7xxxM and P870DM models simply use the space on cooling. I can wholeheartedly say that my P370SM3 is the same general size as a P770ZM or P870DM and if I had no ODD in this, there'd be SO much extra space to fit extra cooling. Especially for my CPU with another fin and fourth fan, and moving the position of my master GPU to fit like my slave GPU does. Note that all the models which I listed that have no ODD just now from Clevo have 2 x HDD + 2 x M.2/mSATA slots. So no, don't expect ODDs from the Clevos or many mainstream laptops anymore.

 

Resistor. There are a group of 4 or 8 of those for hardware ID, allowing the modern GeForce and Quadro/Tesla counterparts to share the same VBIOS. The product type information is determined at run time.

It's perfectly normal even if NVidia didn't artificially lock any function in the more expensive versions and just use legal means to stop non-consumer users from buying the cheaper ones. (Think about how software licensing works.) Maximizing profit by market segmentation is simply how business works.

BTW, the Quadros are not the same hardware. Non-NVS Quadros are usually a bit worse than GeForce counterparts due to the lowered load. (Quadro K5000 was a disaster for example. You'd better buy a GTX 680 4GB and crack it.) The NVS line-up is a trash can for any leftover that still has an accessible front end.

MXM Clevos run Quadros just fine, often better due to faster CPU and more powerful cooling, and those cards are cheap.

 

Speaking of MXM, doesn't it seem like the current standard is heading out the gate with HBM requiring new implementations and whatnot? Would it really be a good idea to invest in an expensive workstation right now?

 

HBM does not necessarily require new GPU form factor or interface. There seems to be enough space on a standard MXM Type-B board even for Fiji.

 

It doesn't need changing for HBM. It is a terrible idea to invest in ANY machine that does not have modular hardware, ever. And intel doesn't want us using modular hardware, and Clevo is the only company who's doing something about it.

 

It baffles me how stuff like the GT80 uses soldered CPUs. I fear we might be moving towards a future where the only modularity in laptops will be oddballs like the P7x1ZM that have desktop CPUs.

 

Then desktop CPUs become BGA only as well. And before you know it, the latest and greatest technology for peasants without access to the cloud is called the super workablate! With 21 point touch and motion sensors, all within an incredible thickness of 5mm! What a time to be alive!

 

Intel decided nobody needs mobile sockets anymore. Any machine made from about June 2014 or later has been soldered-only for CPUs. Any older socketed machines are disallowed changes. You need to BIOS-update them to support newer cards and they wouldn't last much longer anyway as broadwell was effectively soldered-only and "skipped" for the most part.

We are at that future. I have it on decent word from someone at intel via a proxy friend of mine that Intel basically assumes people will use desktop chips in laptops like how Clevo's been doing it since forever if they want real power. I have it on even better word from someone I spoke to at a Clevo rebrander via the phone that intel didn't plan to use sockets for a few generations; which means that Skylake's successor or THAT chip's successor may be when a return to sockets might be considered.

Also, that intel guy as well thinks that anybody serious about making a gaming PC as far as intel is concerned should be looking to the enthusiast platforms. Mainstream i5 and i7 chips are never going to be as good for overclocking and memory overclocking and everything purely because Intel doesn't expect consumers to use them for the good gaming PCs. It's also why there's no iGPUs on the enthusiast chips; saves space for cores and whatnot. I remember people complaining heavily about why intel doesn't make their high end i7s (especially the unlocked ones) without iGPUs... well they do. It's the enthusiast chips. You're meant to buy those.

 

And like I have commented, the thin and light generation has taken over. Sane design is dying. What is wrong with no holds barred workstation and gaming laptops? Sometimes you have to have thick and heavy if you want top performance and cooling. One size does not fit all.

 

What I find funny about this is there is a market for Loaded Laptop's. Your $1500 15 inch Mac Pro with an under clocked I7 and 8gb of ram is not going to be fast enough to edit 4k or 8k video on the road. It also won't process 80 mp files from a Phase One digital camera (in a reasonable amount of time), what if you have 300 x 80mp photo's to go through on the road at an on location shoot?

Then you have engineers that use Auto Cad, or 3D studio..... or Maya.........

They have been trying to "stupidify: technology so much..... I remember when I saw the first 1 button flat bed scanner.... I was like wt*? I want detailed software where I set the DPI, resolution, and all the other technical settings to get the best scan I can.. I am tired of this lazy click the button...... $2000 brick that can't be upgraded.... bs.

It is funny talking to fellow photographers.... especially on facebook.....

"Why is light room so slow"........ Well your $2000 15inch Mac pro has a full SSD that you can't upgrade.... Oh wait,..... 8gb ram.... sorry.... 16gb would help...... and oh that i5? You might as well use it to keep your door open or check email.

Time to buy a new $2000 door stop.

$2000 is allot to pay to only be able to check email? :-D

 

Indeed. And Apple is hardly Pro now, and PC workstations for quite some time have been embarrasing Apple products soundly doing actual modern workflow. KCETech1 and I love seeing Apple users sit and wait for rendering, and us getting our job finished.

 

Apple's benefit is that in certain programs (like Adobe) OS X is cleared to use OpenCL hardware acceleration out of the box. It makes rendering quicker and less hot/power-draining on systems, so people have the illusion that OS X is somehow "better" for rendering and stuff... or they compare it to cheap, disposable consumer laptops like HP's consumer line.

Apple hasn't made good laptops OR desktops in many years. Everything is directed to the look and feel of the chassis and then price is jacked up like crazy. At least their support is for the most part top notch... that's something everybody else lacks in consumer-gen products.

 

I don't suppose Clevo, Lenovo (Workstation laptops) Eurocom or anyone has 10gbase-t available on any of their laptops? Forgot to add that to the dream laptop specs....

 

Unfortunately I don't know what you mean by a 10gbase-t.

You should check out and make a post HERE while you're at it.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Gigabit_Ethernet

I use a fiber version on my render server at home etc. I do have 10GBE through a PCI card in a couple of my advanced docks. and looks like Thunderbolt 3 will play nice with it as well finally

 

Wired networking..... 10/100....... 10/100/1000 is what most laptop's have....... the next gen is 10/100/1000/10,000. Gigabit networking is slow in 2015. 10 gigabit is where it is at. Right now I am making a secondary backup of 1.5tb of files over USB 3.0 and it is telling me it will take 20 hours...... that is way to slow.

I need it done in less than an hour..... 10 minutes would be nice...

 

Wireless AC can transfer ~900MB/s which should get 1.5TB done in under an hour.... should beat 1Gb for bandwidth.

 

Small b, not big B

 

^ is what I've been going by

 

Yeah, but that is an 8 antenna router connected optimally to an 8 antenna client.

And if it doesn't have 10GbE Ethernet ports along with at least one other device with 10GbE connectivity (like this) to complement that wireless potential, that is just how it will stay as (potential).

 

See:
https://www.qnap.com/solution/thunderbolt-nas/en-us/index.php


This is what works onsite as you (may) want.

 

Yeah but how many antennas do our wireless cards and routers have?

 

Well in that case we can do 225MB/s with our two-antennae cards and routers. Not nearly as impressive as 900MB/s but it's still pretty fast. If it took him half hour to transfer 1.5TB then it'd take him 2 hours. Still a huge benefit from his 20-hour solution though =D.

 

Actually the max theoretical speed over 5GHz for today's 2x2 Wireless AC cards is 867Mbps which is about 100MBps, although in the real world you'd be lucky to achieve half that even at point blank range from the router.

 

well meowcheese then.

 

Yeah, theoretical is for the book worms. In the real world, 60% of theoretical at optimum distances*** is about the best you can do.

And... there are no 8 antenna AC routers you can buy today (at any price). And clients? In any notebook, up to 3 antenna is the max.



*** See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ac1200-usb-wifi-adapter-roundup,4241-6.html

WiFi is still as much an art form as it is science.

Don't believe the manufacturer's marketing baloney. What you get in your setup is the only real world result that matters. (And everyone's WiFi setup and environment is very, very different in ways that can not always be understood or accounted for).

 

While I don't like it, I think you're right that we are at that future. It's a shame really; you can get a nice performance boost by upgrading a CPU, and in cases like that of a friend whose laptop motherboard died, it's less expensive to buy a new laptop mobo and replace it than to have to buy the whole interior all over again.

Though I do think mainstream i5/i7 (desktop) CPUs actually overclock pretty well. Maybe it's because I'm still on Sandy and Sandy's known for its overclocking, but I haven't read about it being that much worse with newer generations (and Devil's Canyon in particular has a good OC reputation). All the same, I do agree that it would be nice if there were CPUs at a wider selection of price points without iGPUs, and with more cores. Desktop iGPUs are, to me, useful only as diagnostics when the main GPU has an issue, and that could be done just as well with a cheap GT 210 from Micro Center if I didn't have a spare on hand. I suppose the FX-8350 is the closest thing to a non-enthusiast-priced CPU that makes that no-iGPU-for-more-cores tradeoff, but it's already almost 3 years old and had mediocre single-threaded performance when new.