Black Morty Rackham
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2004
- Messages
- 4,728
I've currently got a 2008-model Macbook Pro (the first of the unibody ones) with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, and it's been a good laptop for my needs, with (for the time, anyway) reasonably powerful GPU and CPU, a decent amount of memory, and relatively low weight. I'm looking to replace it, and I'm considering going non-Apple, as I'll be running Windows on it anyway (Fusion, 3ds Max, etc).
Here's a list of some key points I'm looking for:
With these key points in mind, does anyone have any good recommendations? There appear to be dozens of different potentially-viable brands, so I figured I'd try asking here. You guys seem much more up to speed on these things than I am.
Any help is appreciated, so thank you in advance!
Here's a list of some key points I'm looking for:
- Preferably not heavier than ~2.5 kg. The lighter the better.
- Needs descrete graphics, preferably a reasonably fast Nvidia chip. Quadro card is ok, but not a requirement. Preferably 2+ gigs of VRAM. This is where the current-gen Apple MBPs fall short; they only come with 1 gig AMD cards. Some of my software uses OpenCL but there is some CUDA-based stuff that I'm interested in, so Nvidia is preferable.
- Quad-core i7. I'm a 3D graphics professional, so this is pretty high on the list.
- Upgradeable to 16 gigs of RAM. I looked at some Dells, but their XPS laptops can only be bought with 8 gigs, and they told me that it's not user upgradeable without voiding the warranty.
- Good build quality, keyboard, etc.
- User-upgradeable is a plus. The Dell laptops are apparently not, and I rather like the idea of being able to replace the hard drive or stick more RAM in it if I need to.
- Price is not the main issue here; I'm willing to spend more money if it gets me a better product. Nothing unreasonable, but it's fine if it' a couple of thousand. It's tax deductible anyway.
With these key points in mind, does anyone have any good recommendations? There appear to be dozens of different potentially-viable brands, so I figured I'd try asking here. You guys seem much more up to speed on these things than I am.
Any help is appreciated, so thank you in advance!