Reply To: What are some great laptops for high quality rendering? Thoughts on external graphics cards?

[chihwah li]

Both CPU and GPU will help. Blender itself can use both. Some YouTube posts say nodes use CPU, and mesh modelling uses GPU. So they beefier your laptop the better. VRAM is important for rendering textures. If you do not have enough, the operating system (O.S.) slows down, because the operating system is forced to swap textures from VRAM to O.S. memory. That is an extra operation. Recommended is 32GB system memory and 12GB or more VRAM.

Small projects do not require a lot of VRAM. depends on you. to give you an idea about VRAM: https://blenderartists.org/t/got-a-quick-question-on-textures-and-video-ram/1539799

When you are close to the 3D object, you need 2 or 4K textures, like rock climbing. If the 3D object is far away, or X meters away, you might not notice the difference. then 0.5K 1k textures are good enough. If you use binoculars ingame, then it has to change again. far becomes close again. How to solve? 

GPU RTX 4090 would be best, Toms hardware GPU hierarchy has a list of frames per second for every GPU (desktop), but it does show the fps differences between models. That gives you a general idea, if it is enough for you.

Price difference between a laptop with RTX 4060 and 4080, is not much. You will be happy if you went for a RTX4080 minimal. It just is the sweet spot. Pricewise and performance.

Please buy the system from a respected shop. I had 2 laptops with blue screen problems. Blue screen of death they call it. The operating system just gets some error and crashes. It happens once per few days. But it tells something, the laptop is not stable. power fluctuations, overheat problem, memory with ESD errors.

ESD is electronic static discharge, the same electricity shock you receive if you touch someone who has a different bodily voltage. Then a current slows quickly from body to body, that is what you feel if you get a sudden shock. that is the reason electronics get damaged. It works, but has become unrealiable, due to a tiny damage in the electronics.

13 and 14th generation intel have a cpu burn problem! if you buy second hand it might happen that it is already damaged. Not a joke. I am serious.

If you buy these systems, really test these laptops out, do a 3D  benchmark test for a long time, see if it can keep running without problems. There are free programs for that.

Let it run for example 1 day. continuously. In IT that is called a “burn in” test.

external GPU is extra overhead, if you want to go for this route, then laptop is useless. the amount of hardware to drag along is the same as a desktop. Really.

Desktop has everything inside a neat case, very sturdy, laptop with external gp and 2 power supplies is just too bulky and even more difficult to move around.

besides. a desktop has 50% more gpu power for the same gpu model compared to laptop. laptop has a benefit: it can use 1/3 of the power of an desktop, and only perform 50% less. that is the positive side of a laptop too.

I googled some:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/rtx-4080-laptop/s?k=rtx+4080+laptop

Happy laptop hunting. (hope I don’t talk too much now. Excuse me.)