using Maxwell Render with Solidworks on laptop

Rendering is always CPU intensive, so I would get the fastest machine possible and load up on RAM, and since I keep machines for 2-3 years before upgrading, I would get the highest end laptop I could. The Dell M60 and M70 have always performed pretty well next to higher end desktops.

I spoke with the Dell guys at SolidWorks world, and they noted that the next generation of machines is due out in March.

I currently use the M60, and since it is now well over 2 years old, I expect I will upgrade, and I'm thinking of getting Maxwell Render, too. I didn't have enough time at the show floor to spend any amount of time going into Maxwell, but I'll bet someone at the company would respond with examples from experience. They seemed fairly responsive to the question or two I had.

Bo

will snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

Well I use Maxwell with an M20 and it works fine.

As Bo mentioned it all in the processor speed. However if you are planning to render while on the train, then the computer is very slow at doing anything else - or if you set maxwell to low priority then the rendering is slow . ;-)

TTFN

Jonathan

If you're looking at the M20, cost is probably an issue. If speed is more of an issue, you may consider a laptop with dual core, since Photoworks will make good use of the second process.

There are several AMD offerings which have the 64 X2. Someone recently said he bought a Hypersonic with the X2 4800+, which would make a great rendering machine, but he probably paid over $3k for it. M20 would be about $2k or less.

Hypersonic, Alienware and Xtremenotebooks.com are the 3 AMD laptop providers I would take a look at.

matt

Matt - sychronocity at work - my copy of Personal Computer dropped through the post and it has on the cover

"ACER Travelmate 8204WLMi - fastest laptop ever !" and a short review inside.

- Spec - intel 2ghz Duo Core T2500 processor

2gb Ram ATI Radeon X1600 160gb disc

• the usual mobile wireless stuff

£1,760

I don't know my computer specs but it looks nice !

TTFN

Jonathan

Ok, the Radeon is not a card you want to use with SolidWorks. There's=20 another outlandish thread right now where some guy is melting down over=20 this. I looked at a few Acers, and the ones I saw all had Radeons or=20 SiS mobo integrated video, which is even worse. You could live with=20 FireGL, or better yet nVidia Quadro FX Go 1400. Anything nVidia except=20 the NVS is ok. A Quadro 500 used to come in old Dell laptops (M50)=20 which I have been using for 3-4 years, and the video has worked fine, if=20 somewhat slow. =20

matt

Definately stick with the highest end laptop video card which SolidWorks recommends.

Virtually ALL Laptop mfgrs have or shortly will release their newest versions with the latest CPUs, so there is some strategy to use here based on your circumstances, since "last years models" will be discounted shortly or are already are, depending on what you want to pay for a great machine.

Dell sells refurb returns & demos of M20 and M70 ocassionally at good prices.

Bo

What i found, is that the number of floating point calculations of a procesor is what really makes the differance in rendering time. Of course all the other components have to keep up with the procesor.

schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

Seems to me most of the Maxwell renders take many hours to produce a fairly noiseless image - longer than the battery charge of a laptop anyway. I would be inclined to have Maxwell on a retired pc and just have it churning away in the background or overnight as a dedicated render machine.

BTW as general news for SW people - there is a script to allow a render engine similar to Maxwell which is under development to be used with Blender . Go here to look at some trial renders.

this will yield a free soln of similar capability in the near future. In other Blender development news there is a lot happening to the rendering system which will allow rendering in passes, OpenEXR images, material nodes etc and ultimately micropolygons.

Good point Neil - I haved my laptop plugged in when rendering because as you say it takes hours.

TTFN

Jonathan

Thanks for the replies.

Is it possible to continue modelling on Solidworks while Maxwell is producing a render? Would a dual core be beneficial for this? I'm assuming you can but Solidworks would be pretty slow.

Don't know about the dual core - You can set the number of threads used by Maxwell so I suppose you could set it to 0ne ( you get up to 4 with one license) and then hopefully use SW on the other but it is best to ask Next Limit direct.

On my single cpu machine - if Maxwell is rendering - you might as well have a coffee and read the paper ;-)

TTFN

Jonathan

>

Jonathan, part size, background and complexity affect render times, so I'ld like to ask a quick question on render times.

If one were to model a typical computer mouse with one or two light sources, and then render with no background & no reflections, can you estimate what the likely time to render in Maxwelll might be?

I know the answer will be an estimate, but I'm just trying to get my hands around the ballpark of such objects for rendering.

Thanks - Bo

Intel Pentium4 with 3.00Ghz or better and hyperthreading. (Same as duel processor)

One gig of main memory.

Dedicated AGP video with minimum of 64 megs and 17in widescreen.

It will suck up power like a hoover and pump out enough BTU's to heat a room.

This is NOT the same as dual processor, or even dual core. Hyperthreading is one processor core pretending to be two in order to help reduce latencies incurred when a processor switches from one thread to another.

It hauls ass.