-
Mobile Hardware
Hello All, Am looking at purchasing a Dell Mobile M90 workstation for “work on the go” Specs are basically a Dual Core 233mHz processor, 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 17″ Wide Aspect UXGA Monitor, NVIDIA Quadro FX2500m 512mb video card and a 120GB Serial ATA 5400rpm hard drive. Will be running AE7 and Premiere and CS2 Creative Suite. Does anyone have experience with these machines and what are your thoughts? Also would a faster 7200rpm 100GB hard drive be benenficial for video work?
Thanks in advnce for replies, Zorro
-
4 Replies
-
Hi, Main reason for the machine is conventional graphic work with the odd mix of 3d and title/motion graphic sequences (type, photos and graphics in AE)and some 720×576 DV footage.
-
Aha Zorro, we meet again!
Sorry, always wanted to say that.
Anyhow, I have not worked with that specific machine, but I do work exclusively on a 3ghz P4 laptop. I assume that it is a 2.33 GHZ processor and not a 233 mhz processor, and it is a “Core Duo” or a “Core 2 Duo”. Either way it will give you a lot of bang for your buck. The chips will be more than fast enough for what you will be doing. There will still be some render times in after effects, but unless you put on 40 or 50 effects on 30 layers you should not have to wait overnight.
The largest boost would be from the Nvidia Quadro graphics board. In after Effects you can enable “Open GL Acceleration”. This will significantly speed up workflow, especially scrubbing the timeline during project creation.
As hard drives go…Even a lowly 4200 rpm drive can chug along at 18mb (mega-bytes) a second. DV video requires 3.8mb (or so) a second. I started out with a 4200rpm 60 gig drive (had no problems) and recently upgraded to a 5400rpm 120GB Seagate and am very happy.
I run the Creative suite myself, and even though I only have 1.25 Gigs of memory my machine still handles it like a champ. (Just for reference, I have the Toshiba P25-S520).
Just make sure that you have the latest driver from Nvidia and all should be well. Oh, and an external HD is always a welcome addition.
Scott
-
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the reply. My speed typing got a little out of control… Yes it is a 2.33GHZ processor… Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo Processor T7600 2.33GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 667MHz FSB. I figured as much with the hard drives but was interested to know if my assumptions were correct. Currently my portable solution is a Dell Inspiron8500, 2.6GHZ P4, NVIDIA GeForce4 4200GO 64Mb Card and 1GB of ram… has served me well over the last 3 years… guessing I’ll notice a speed increase.
Once again thanks for the reply,
Darry… Zorro (swish, swish) -
hd footage
ok, i have issue with this “no hd footage” yes it’s btter not to do hd footage on a “slower machine” but i’ve recently been stuck in a predicament that, hey i have plugins on my 1.5 ghz ppc 12 inch laptop and i have to use them on d5 footage and a 2k 10 bit log.
ya it took a long ass time, but it works, i didn’t have a single crash or major problem.
so keep in mind, slow doesn’t matter if it works…right?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up