maya and 3ds max

ok i bought the toshiba m40 sf3 notebook. great notebook i gotta say. lately i have been running quite a lot of maya. i am working on fluid modelling and nanorobot design for ne1 who cares. when i playback animations the computer sort of slows down. i was wondering, since i am going to be doing more of this, how can i improve the performance in this aspect. i think is ram or hard drive...my upgrade budget is really low...about 100canadian dollars at most...wut shud i fix to improve my performance?....

o and the guy at futureshop where i went to ask about this said is due to my video card...i thought the guy was mistaken....he said the card is not pci express therefore cannot render as fast as the card like mrx600. is it due to my video card...?

 

hey man....i dont know when u got the M40 but what im getting now defenitly has PCI express..... ceck it out....

Toshiba Satellite M40-S417TD - Laptop Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2.00GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz), Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP2, 1024MB PC2700 DDR 333MHz SDRAM (512MBx2), 15.4" Diagonal Wide-scren SXGA+ display (1440x900), NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6600 PCI-E x16 128MB SDRAM, 80GB HDD (5400rpm, ATA-6), DVD/CD-RW, Atheros® Wireless LAN (802.11a/b/g) with SuperAG? Technology, harman/kardon® stereo speakers, Lithium Ion Battery (12-Cell, 8600mAh) , 1-Year Standard Limited Warranty

That is exactly what im getin..... but on my old computer it does the same in 3d mode with free hand from macromedia...but since i have a nVidia 5900 Ultra in that one, it cant be the video card... I think its more becasue of the procesor...i thought u had 1024 Ram or not? I doubt its the hadr drive....that shouldnt have anything to do with rendering...

I hope i help at least a little....

 

yeah..u do have 512...id would defenitly get 1024 RAM iether way.... and its probably the only thing u can upgrade anyway....

 

Sadafbahaza,

As Epiphonester indicated, this unit does have a PCI-Xpress graphics card. There could be a couple issue that could cause a slowdown when playing back your animations/renders.

1. Drivers - The drivers used could be a possible bottleneck. Try getting the lastest (not from Toshiba site) and see if it helps.

2. Amount of ram. Since you have 512MB, possibly upgrading to 1GB may help in the performance.

3. OS. The OS may be a cause for bottlenecks as well. If you have the original OS load that came with the unit, you may have excess apps/processes that are loading in the background. This can cause your system to chug. Try reloading the system via the manual method and install only the drivers you want, no un-necessary software/drivers.

4. Application memory leak. This could be a problem with the app your using. If it has a memory leak, the memory used by the app is not being released when it's finished using it and therefore the amount of free memory will start to drop. This will deplete the amount of free memory and will cause your system to slow down. See if there are any updates to the app, or try rebooting the system before running the animation (as a test) to see if it helps in any way.

-Vb-

 

u guyz thank u all very much....

 

one more thing...the futureshop ppl are constantly pssn me off...they say the video card is not good enuff...wth the vid card is go 6600...they say is shared and is not pcix...i noe they r wrong...my parents sure dont...

 

yeah thats really wierd that they are trying to say its not pcie.....u dont need to be a genious to figure that one out.... unless u dont have go 6600 which doesnt make any sence iether....im preaty sure that the go 6600 is only in pcie mode....look into ur drivers in ur display manager what it say...also check ur system in the controll panell, that will defenitly tell u what u got...

 

What are you getting in battery life on the M40-S417TD?