Photo editing laptop - dedicated graphics card worth it?
I'm looking to buy a new laptop that will be used mainly for editing photos (not on a daily basis or anything, though I am looking to do more) and web browsing. I currently use "Silkypix" software but am thinking of switching to Lightroom. Is it worth getting one with a dedicated graphics card? I currently use a Dell XPS so pretty high spec (2.50GHz i5 2-core, GMB RAM) and while it does the job it does get 'hot' with extended use and struggles with games. Would I be better getting a quad core processor? Budget is limited, so am looking at 2nd hand/refurbs, ideally around £300 (integrated graphics) but would push it to £500 if the improvements were worth it. I've had my last 3 PC's & 2 laptops from PCSPECIALIST - Top Spec Custom PCs & Laptops Built to Order to my spec'. If you use their wizard to custom design yours, you will get exactly what you want. Usually, if you get one of the major makes with a dedicated graphics card, they also have the basic card which bumps up the price. with PCS you can just specify a dedicated graphics card. Your budget is a bit light for a new machine. Yeh, thanks those look nice but am looking at 2nd/hand/graded/refurbs. I know I won't get exactly what I want, just wondering where to compromise and if dedicated graphics card is worth paying extra for? Yes it will help but possibly more important lightroom-gpu-faq.html- get as much memory as you can afford - 16 gig if possibke but absolute minimum of 8 gig and a quad core cpu - also a ssd for storage will boost performanceAdobe Lightroom GPU Troubleshooting and FAQ
Lightroom Performance - What Computer Hardware Do I Need? | The Lightroom Queen Laptop won't be ideal for your needs. They run extremely hot when doing anything other than light browsing. Consider a desktop PC instead. Sky is the limit with them. Maybe some do Adrian but not necessarily - plenty of gaming spec laptops out there that run fine at relatively moderate temperatures while running games under heavy load on all parts of system...... Yes, of course Jim. However, when buying a laptop for anything other than sending emails and light browsing, there is always a compromise involved. Yes, you can buy a gaming laptop, but a) they are expensive, b) the still run hot (comparing to a desktop of same spec), c) you will be limited when it comes to screen and screen for editing is important.
When it comes to desktop, you can spend as much as you want, you won't have a problem with temps (if built well) and you can pair it with any screen you want (yes, you can do that with laptop too, but that defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place if you are chained to the desk where your monitor is anyway).
I have went through all of that myself. I edit photos professionally and as some of you remember I have bought an expensive laptop to be able to edit photos on the go (when abroad). Unfortunately editing photos on a 15" screen is really not ideal at all. So what I found myself doing instead is informing my clients that I will be out of town for that amount of time and using that expensive laptop for emails and light browsing instead. Laptops are just not ideal for editing, there is just too many compromises with them. Even though I have a machine that on paper is more than capable of doing what I want, in real world it is just too much for it. After 15 min in Photoshop with the fast working that I usually do the laptop reaches 100C and beyond. There is just too much electronics cramped into tiny space with them. With the small screen I'm very limited in my field of view on the screen, even though the screen is 4k native. When it comes to colour grading I like to do that when zoomed out, but even though the screen is properly colour calibrated, zoomed out photo on a 15" screen is just tiny. It also forces me to move the photo a lot more around the screen when zoomed in and working on detail, which in turn makes it much less efficient comparing to when I'm on my primary machine.
With desktop, you can buy a second hand PC for a relatively little amount of money that will solve most if not all of the problems mentioned.
Of course, this all is just my opinion, whatever that is worth.
By the way, I know of professional retouchers who work on laptops exclusively. So in a way what I have said above is a waste of your time. However, having done the same work on both laptop and desktop PCs, I can honestly say that, if I don't have to, I would never pick laptop as my primary machine... unless until engineers solve those fundamental problems mentioned above. Excuse long post. Thanks, yes you're probably right and in an ideal world I'd probably be going for an iMac. However I'm only likely to use it for maybe 2 hours a week on average so it doesn't justify the outlay. Plus I can't sit at a desk for long periods due to sciatica so a laptop allows me to change location/posture more easily. I agree with most of your points Adrian although what makes the current laptop situation rather more ridiculous is that they aren't packing more into them, they're actually packing much less into them.Over time components have been integrated into motherboards and over the last few yearsthey've been further integrated into the processor itself including the memory controller, integrated graphics, PCI-E controller etc. leaving very little on the motherboard especially as the ports have been cut right down as well.Processors are mostly low power 15W models as well but it's not an engineering problem, it's easily possible for companies to produce laptops that run quietly and cool.However the market trend is to have laptops that are thin and light even when it compromises the laptop so badly the hardware has to throttle to protect itself.
OP, your question is a difficult one because £500 is a low budget for a laptop with discrete graphics.Have you specced up any machines yet?I wouldn't be compromising my choice of laptop to get a discrete GPU for Lightroom but gaming is different, a decent discrete graphics card can be the difference between a decent gaming machine and one that is worthless at gaming. Yeh I saw a couple that had discrete graphics and 8GB memory for around £500, none quad-core though. From the replies here seems like the discrete graphics card is less critical than the memory and processor, which makes things a bit easier as 16GB quad core looks easier to find/cheaper. Also there's the whole rabbit hole of discrete-but-not-really-discrete graphics cards that I don't really want to venture into. Probably not going to get a satisfactory upgrade on my current laptop for this budget.
Pages:
[1]
2