Needing help with laptop choices

    No, I'm not getting a PC because I move locations every now and then

    I'm considering replacing my two-year-old GTX 1650 HP Pavilion 15 Gaming laptop with an RTX 3060/3070 HP Omen 16 because I'm going to start film and animation design college next month. The majority of the first year will be spent learning 3D design and animation using Blender and Adobe applications (Most definitely After Effects). I'm a little worried that I'll waste money since my current laptop may or may not be more than enough to do the job.

    Is it worth it, or should I just get an external SSD? My current one can run After Effects and Blender alright, it's just that I feel like maybe upgrading can further improve my workflow (especially on playbacks) which can save a lot of my time ?(

    Are you sure that's a compromise you're willing to make? Typically from what I've seen you're only getting good performance when your laptop is actually plugged in. Otherwise it throttles itself which is not ideal. I've had great satisfaction with my M1 MacBook Air and the render times were pretty good for me tbh. Not sure I'd be able to recommend it for your work flow since I'm not sure exactly what you're doing.

    Quote from Telesphoreo

    Are you sure that's a compromise you're willing to make? Typically from what I've seen you're only getting good performance when your laptop is actually plugged in. Otherwise it throttles itself which is not ideal. I've had great satisfaction with my M1 MacBook Air and the render times were pretty good for me tbh. Not sure I'd be able to recommend it for your work flow since I'm not sure exactly what you're doing.

    To be completely honest, I just needed a laptop that renders compositing in After Effects faster than my current 1650 laptop 😂 I'll most definitely learn 3D modelling and animation in my college on the first year but, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I should wait 2-3 more years before actually upgrading (A part of me wants to use my pavillion laptop to the fullest too, knowing that i've used it for only like 2 years).

    Who knows maybe rtx cards would be a lot more powerful in the future with cheaper prices

    Speaking of Macbook Airs, does it throttle too when unplugged? I've seen a lot of editors and modellers on youtube use it and it looks pretty solid.

    Edited once, last by Fracklo (July 23, 2022 at 3:27 AM).

    Quote from Fracklo
    Quote from Telesphoreo

    Are you sure that's a compromise you're willing to make? Typically from what I've seen you're only getting good performance when your laptop is actually plugged in. Otherwise it throttles itself which is not ideal. I've had great satisfaction with my M1 MacBook Air and the render times were pretty good for me tbh. Not sure I'd be able to recommend it for your work flow since I'm not sure exactly what you're doing.

    To be completely honest, I just needed a laptop that renders compositing in After Effects faster than my current 1650 laptop 😂 I'll most definitely learn 3D modelling and animation in my college on the first year but, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I should wait 2-3 more years before actually upgrading (A part of me wants to use my pavillion laptop to the fullest too, knowing that i've used it for only like 2 years).

    Who knows maybe rtx cards would be a lot more powerful in the future with cheaper prices

    Speaking of Macbook Airs, does it throttle too when unplugged? I've seen a lot of editors and modellers on youtube use it and it looks pretty solid.

    The ones with Apple Silicon tend to not do so. The Intel Macs throttle pretty much all the time due to inadequate cooling

    Quote from Fracklo
    Quote from Telesphoreo

    Are you sure that's a compromise you're willing to make? Typically from what I've seen you're only getting good performance when your laptop is actually plugged in. Otherwise it throttles itself which is not ideal. I've had great satisfaction with my M1 MacBook Air and the render times were pretty good for me tbh. Not sure I'd be able to recommend it for your work flow since I'm not sure exactly what you're doing.

    To be completely honest, I just needed a laptop that renders compositing in After Effects faster than my current 1650 laptop 😂 I'll most definitely learn 3D modelling and animation in my college on the first year but, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I should wait 2-3 more years before actually upgrading (A part of me wants to use my pavillion laptop to the fullest too, knowing that i've used it for only like 2 years).

    Who knows maybe rtx cards would be a lot more powerful in the future with cheaper prices

    Speaking of Macbook Airs, does it throttle too when unplugged? I've seen a lot of editors and modellers on youtube use it and it looks pretty solid.

    I currently work on a RTX 1650 for 3D models as well and it's much better than my M1 Macbook Pro. Keep in mind my RTX PC does also have 32GBs of Ram and an Intel Core i9, so yours might not be as powerful when taking these factors into account.

    Macs aren't the best at 3D, but they're certainly not useless. My M1 can run shaders (which are optimised for ARM architecture, of course) pretty well and I used to do my 3D models on it before I got my PC.

    Bottom line is get the device according to priorities. Will you do more 3D work? Invest in a PC with sufficient RAM (I recommend 16GB minimum so multitasking is easier), Core i7 at the very least and a graphics card which has decent power (Any mid to high range is the best). Will you work more on video editing and 2D animation? Macbooks are praised for that, and the M1 ones are beasts. Long battery lives, great experience in the interface and you get to brag you own an apple product if you're on of those people.

    One note: do remember both MacOS and Windows are vastly different and there will be an initial time needed to adjust if you've never used one or the other. And some programs have better optimisation on one over the other too.

    According to quantum mechanics, unless something is observed, there is an equal chance of it both being and not being there. Hence it is said to be in superposition, until observed. However we are somehow fully certain, despite never having directly observed, that you indeed have no bitches. Your bitchlessness has broken the rules quantum mechanics had established. Indeed an impressive feat.

    After a heckin' long time of considering, I'm sticking with my current 2 year old model that still holds up well + buy a good external SSD instead to store my other programs. This alongside other inputs really helped, so thanks a ton!

    Quote from Fracklo

    After a heckin' long time of considering, I'm sticking with my current 2 year old model that still holds up well + buy a good external SSD instead to store my other programs. This alongside other inputs really helped, so thanks a ton!

    Like I said, the GTX 1650 is great from personal experience so you shouldn't have any issues with it. I checked the specs on your laptop model and it seems to come with 16 GB ram which should work fine in mostly all cases. However, if possible, you may wanna upgrade your CPU to an i7. it's a bit harder on laptops than it is on a custom build PC, but possible if you're up to it.

    According to quantum mechanics, unless something is observed, there is an equal chance of it both being and not being there. Hence it is said to be in superposition, until observed. However we are somehow fully certain, despite never having directly observed, that you indeed have no bitches. Your bitchlessness has broken the rules quantum mechanics had established. Indeed an impressive feat.

    Quote from Beta_Alpha
    Quote from Fracklo

    After a heckin' long time of considering, I'm sticking with my current 2 year old model that still holds up well + buy a good external SSD instead to store my other programs. This alongside other inputs really helped, so thanks a ton!

    Like I said, the GTX 1650 is great from personal experience so you shouldn't have any issues with it. I checked the specs on your laptop model and it seems to come with 16 GB ram which should work fine in mostly all cases. However, if possible, you may wanna upgrade your CPU to an i7. it's a bit harder on laptops than it is on a custom build PC, but possible if you're up to it.

    In case you're wondering, my current specs are:

    i7 9750H (6 cores, 12 threads)

    GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5 VRAM

    16GB DDR4 2400Mhz (upgraded)

    1 TB HDD & 256GB SSD

    Recently got my new 1TB external SSD (Western digital My Passport 1GB/s), and now I store my games, videos, and plugins there 😁

    Planning to upgrade once RTX 40 series + 12th gen intel CPUs in laptops with DDR5 RAM become a common thing in the market 👍

    That should push through really well for most workloads, don't consider an upgrade for maybe another 2 years at most I'd say, these specs should keep you going until then. Laptops have an added bonus that since their batteries are much larger than phone's the overtime battery quality drop is much less noticeable. You could in theory keep using your laptop for another 3-4 years without any big issues or huge drops in battery life so long as you manage it well, but you would at that point lag behind in specs. Not a major issue if your workload doesn't change much, but certainly something for future you to think about.

    According to quantum mechanics, unless something is observed, there is an equal chance of it both being and not being there. Hence it is said to be in superposition, until observed. However we are somehow fully certain, despite never having directly observed, that you indeed have no bitches. Your bitchlessness has broken the rules quantum mechanics had established. Indeed an impressive feat.