Good evening from Vienna (or whatever daytime out there )

Hope this is the right place to post this (and if not: sorry). I've to get a new laptop soon and I intend to buy a macbook pro with the nvidia geforce 8600M GT. I've searched the forums a bit and in some postings I read that the 8600M GT isn't quite a good choise for Houdini. Of course I know that a workstation will do a much better job but I work a lot with my laptop.
I'm interested in a dell laptop with dual SLI nvidia 8800 GTX (512 MB) as well. Now my question to those of you who have experience with macbook pros and dell laptops. Which one would you actually recommend me? Or do you know any other laptop with good capabilities for Houdini?
Thanks in advance for your help!

btw: Many thanks to the staff of Sidefx providing such a great piece of software for free. Although I'm quite new to houdini I can't stop playing around with its features. That's one of the reasons I want to work with Houdini on the new laptop.

Cheers!

Hi seyed

welcome to the forum. it is indeed a great piece of software.
As for laptops, I myself us a dell precision with dual core 4.4 GHZ and a nvidia fx 1600m.
My operating system is ubuntu 8.04 as houdini runs better on Linux than on windows (IMHO). Don't know about Mac's.

regards

erik

The 8600 is a little underpowered, but a single nvidia 8800 will run Houdini just fine. Houdini doesn't take advantage of SLI, so you're not going to gain anything with a SLI setup.

A fast dual-core CPU (>2.4Ghz) with at least 2GB of memory and a large HD (>200GB) is probably a good idea as well.

If it helps, I'm using a Nvidia 8600M GS card with Houdini … seems to run pretty well. The laptop is HP Pavilion dv9700 with Duo Core, 2.1GHz with 4GB RAM.

As for your choice between Dell & Mac, I'd go with the former. I still have a 6 year old one and it's been solid. Macs are nice & stylish but seem a bit pricey.

My two cents. Good luck with your decision.

Rob

Thanks for your postings! I think I found a pretty neat one:
Quadro FX 1600M 512 MB, Core2Duo T9500 2,6, 4 GB RAM
However there's also the option for 8800M instead of Quadro FX 1600M.

Dunno, let's see. Still searching…

…

*Offtopic*: Bin mir sicher, dass es außer uns beiden noch andere gibt. Ole ^^

ja, ein Vorarlberger der in Genf lebt zum Beispiel…:-))

However, to answer the question: I feel thatHoudini is running fine with every Nvidia card with+ 256Mb Ram. If you plan to use other 3d apps, especially Maya or StudioTools stay away from ANY gamer card.
If you can afford a Quadro 1600M go for it!!!
However you should have a look on the Lenevo T61p with Quadro 570M, and HP 8510w, also with a 570M

Grüsse aus Genf

Thanks Lukas. Yeah, the 570M seems to be a nice card indeed. As you mentioned already the 1600M is pricey but I'll get a student discount. lol, it's not an easy decision to make as I thought 3 weeks ago ^^.

<germanmode> Grüße zurück! </germanmode>

auch Schoene Gruesse von mir (aus Oberoesterreich)… habs vorhin vergessen zu schreiben

*recommendations*
I feel some improvements in speed with the new daily build of Houdini.
also have 2GB of Ram… maybe I buy 2GB more, to have 4GB Power

I use a Mac, and houdini runs well… 8)