Solved Good PC upgrade suggestions for Vegas

So, i'm looking into getting into some freelance Vegas projects for people. Kind of a side job thing. I'd like to upgrade to a new PC, preferrably a laptop, to use just for Vegas and business projects. Derek, what would you suggest as far as PCs go that would run my Movie Studio 13 Suite version. Mostly for speed or to keep the lagging to a minimum. Also, the minimum as far as graphics cards go. Currently i cant run some of the New Blue plug-ins that came with Suite because of that. Just looking for some good, cost effective ideas. Thanks a bunch!

Good question mulderdf! I would like to upgrade my laptop to one with a graphics card that can handle SONY Vegas also.

There are literally 1000's of different laptop models, so I don't have time to shop for you.
However if you find some models and link them here, I can then make a comment/recommendation.

At the moment it is difficult to find a laptop computer that works best with the current versions of Movie Studio and Vegas Pro.
This is because AMD Radeon Graphics Cards work best with Sony Software.
Hopefully when the new versions of Vegas Pro and Movie Studio are released, Graphics Card support will expand to work better with Nvidia cards as well.

It is also important to use an Intel CPU and not AMD CPU right now.
Intel i5 and i7 4x Core CPUs are far superior for Video Editing - I would not recommend AMD CPUs for Video Editing.

Now the big problem you will discover, is that it is almost impossible to buy a laptop with Intel CPU and AMD GPU.
Most Intel CPU laptops come with Nvidia GPU's only.

A Desktop PC is a far better way to go than laptop if possible.
It will cost you less and you will get more processing power.

If it MUST be a laptop, get Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU.
Nvidia will still help with preview playback, just not for rendering.

Regards
Derek

Hi Mulderdf and MrGruntHunter,

Besides what our Good Doc has mentioned, as someone who had to "service" laptops along with our pc's at a School District, and having used one personally, my recommendation is to get one from a company that provides Workstation class laptops. You don't need the "SLI" versioned gaming laptops, since SLI for graphics is typically not supported in Sony, and even Adobe video editing programs. The processor would be a "mobile" version of the desktop counterpart, with the newer ones from Intel having a nomenclature of "6700HK". That processor is a quad core with Hyper-Threading, so you get 4 actual cores, and 4 "virtual" cores, for a total of 8 threads. Unless you can find an HP or Dell with the equivalent Mobile Xeon, and typically more money, stick with the "consumer" version. You also have to be mindful of the number of internal drives the laptop can support. Sure, a lot of the gaming laptops nowadays have two drives in them, or "RAID 0" boot drives for those faster "Game Loads", but not what you need. Your main drive can still be an SSD, but should at least be in 240/256 GB in size, or larger, and make sure you get a secondary drive as well. Be careful here, as most of the manufacturers love putting in the slower 5400 rpm drives, to cut corners/save/etc., but you can have that changed to a 7200 rpm drive, or if your projects won't be too large, another SSD if you want. Just remember, the more you put into a laptop, especially if you also want a DVD or Blu-Ray burner in it with the two drives, is that heat is still a huge factor when it comes to laptops. They definitely run hotter, and the fans are "very" noisy compared to a desktop setup. My laptop, I stopped trying to do any videos on it, even short ones, since it was an older i3 dual core with hyper-threading, and even with two ssd's in it, the processor just couldn't keep up. That was trying to use only CPU, the Intel onboard die graphics, and with the nVidia cheapo mobile version gpu. Might have made it with doing videos that were smaller in size of HD (1080 realm), but then why have the beautiful Blu-Ray burner going to waste? Just had to finally "admit defeat" in that arena, and just use one of my desktops . One place that I have seen for customizing laptops is SagerNotebooks, and they seem to use the larger "shell" body for housing the components. HP also makes great workstation laptops, that you can customize as well. I cannot truthfully comment on Dell workstation laptops as I have never used one, or for that matter, Lenovo either. You can also keep an eye out on the laptops at your local Best Buy, Staples, Frys', etc., but from what I have seen at the stores, you are quite limited to basically what the store has on hand with limited upgradability, including those at say Wal-Mart/Sam's/Costco.

Good luck in your shopping adventures.

Mike "The Chief" O'Sullivan

Who makes a Workstation class laptop ???

Most high end Gaming laptops can also be considered Workstation laptops in my opinion.
Many actual workstation laptops have more expensive Quadro cards, that in reality may not work as well for video editing.

Here is a good selection of performance laptops from an Australian online supplier I use.
www.pccasegear.com/category/1538_1539/laptops-tablets/laptops-tablets