New MacBook Pro and CS5

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[alex schwindt] “Does anyone know whether Premiere inherently runs better on the Mac OS, or is superior on Windows 7?
(all hardware specs being equal)”

About the same give or take a few percentage points.

Alex (DV411)

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[alex schwindt] “Lenovo W520, 2.3GHz Quad-core Intel i7, 16GB ram, 500-7200rpm drive, NVIDIA Quadro 2000M 2GB graphics card”

By the way, thank you for mentioning that. After a few hours of research of my own, this Lenovo model appears is by far the least expensive of all Tier 1 laptops with a GPU (Quadro 2000M) that is officially supported by Adobe.

Alex (DV411)

[Alex Gerulaitis]

(warning: this post is long, boring and full of numbers and acronyms)

This question seem to be asked quite a bit, what’s the best laptop for editing, and specifically, for MPE in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.x.

Would it be useful to have a list of popular laptops in one place where you don’t have to spend hours digging into specs and configurations, to see the approximate “nicely configured” price point, concise specs and the GPU used? If so, what’s the best format of such a list?

Say, we configure them as similarly as possible (the big differentiator is the GPU) and post them side-by-side?

So here goes. With more or less similar specs (i7-2720QM, Win7 Pro 64, 8GB RAM to start with, 500GB 7200rpm HDD, 1080p display, USB 3.0 and eSATA, DVD Burner, 3-yr warranty) here are some laptops that generally satisfy system requirements recommendations for Premiere Pro CS5.x and have officially supported GPUs:

– Lenovo W520 – $2,268.00 with Quadro 2000M 2GB DDR3 Graphics
– HP 8760w XU100UT – $2,999 with Quadro 3000M 2GB
– HP 8740w XT910UT – $2,999 with Quadro FX 3800M 1GB

With GPUs that aren’t officially supported yet will work for MPE hardware acceleration:

– Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 – $1900 with GeForce GTX 560M 1.5GB
– Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q8104X – $1900 with GeForce GTX 460M 1.5GB
– Dell XPS 17 – $1,893.99 (YMMV) with GeForce GT 555M 3GB
– Dell XPS 15 – $1,769.99 (YMMV) with GeForce GT 540M 2GB
– Dell Alienware M17x – $2,913.00 (YMMV) GeForce GT 460M 1.5GB

(Full list with specs and links is here:
https://support.dv411.com/home/vendors/adobe/cs5-laptops – feedback and typo reports appreciated :))

From that list, Lenovo W520 (thanks Alex) is clearly the value and performance leader among those with officially supported GPUs; it lacks a larger screen option however, and doesn’t seem to offer an internal Blu-Ray reader or burner.

Among not-oficially-supported laptops, XPS 15 and 17 are the value leaders, although Toshibas do pack a punch as for about the same price as XPS models, they include dual drives.

The XPS 15 (thanks Chris Knight) is a fantastic deal starting at just $899 with the GeForce® GT 540M 2GB graphics.

Did I miss anything? Are there any other Tier 1 laptops that should be added to that list?

Thanks!

Alex (DV411)

[Stewart Addison]

For the record I have a GT 300M and have Mercury Playback working via the hack. I have been using it for over 12 months and it works like a charm 🙂

It works for CS5 and CS5.5..

” You can enable the hardware function of the mercury engine with the 330M in the new macbook pro’s… Download CUDA for osx from nvidia, and gfxstatus (just google it, and set it to keep the nvidia chip active by default) then…

Open terminal

Now on the terminal type (adjust folders as needed)

/Applications/FOLDER\ FOR\ PREMIERE/PRO\ INSTALLATION\ Pro\ HERE/SOMETHING\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS5.app/Contents/GPUSniffer.app/Contents/MacOS/GPUSniffer

The “uppercased” words might be different for your instalation of CS5, find out yours, do not just simply copy and paste.

– Most of the times, for standard instalations, the following should work, but it will not hurt you to look the actual place where premiere was installed:

CODE
/Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS5/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS5.app/Contents/GPUSniffer.app/Contents/MacOS/GPUSniffer

– You should get an output similar to this:

QUOTE
Texture memory: 0
Vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
Renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce 330M OpenGL Engine
Version string: 2.1 NVIDIA-1.6.16

OpenGL version as determined by Extensionator…
OpenGL Version 2.0
Supports shaders!
Supports BGRA -> BGRA Shader
Supports VUYA Shader -> BGRA
Supports UYVY/YUYV ->BGRA Shader
Supports YUV 4:2:0 -> BGRA Shader
Testing for CUDA support…
Found 1 devices supporting CUDA.
CUDA Device # 0 properties –
CUDA device details:
Name: GeForce 330M Compute capability: 1.2
Total Video Memory: 512MB
CUDA driver version: 3020
CUDA Device # 0 supported.
Completed shader test!
Internal return value: 7

DO NOT CLOSE THE TERMINAL

ADD YOUR CARD TO THE LIST OF SUPPORTED CARDS.

On the terminal type:

CODE
sudo nano /Applications/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS5/Adobe\ Premiere\ Pro\ CS5.app/Contents/cuda_supported_cards.txt

A new window appears, here, simply paste, at the end of the file, the name you copied earlier for your graphic card (GeForce 330M)

NOW

PRESS CTRL + X
ANSWER “Y” (stands for YES, I want to save the file)
Press enter until you get out of the editor.

NOW YOU ONLY HAVE TO FIRE UP YOUR PREMIERE AND CHOOSE YOUR HARDWARE ENABLED MERCURY ENGINE.

ENJOY.

(Btw this will work for any CUDA enabled card!! ”

Haters please don’t start about hardware specs are there for a reason, if the GPU couldn’t playback DVCPROHD, H.264, ProRes 422 LT and HDV in the same time line without a render then it would stutter and the machine would be 110C, but playback is perfect, all day, everyday and at 95C.

It’s not enabled on MacBook Pro’s for a reason. Apple v Adobe that’s why..

[Lee Di genova]

based on this article…
a list of cs5.x optimised laptops,
the list is very impressive,
my preference would be to go with the HP 8760w, listed I was just wondering since nothing of this was mentioned, do you think that the Display Option of the:
led backlit FHD UWVA anti-glare “DreamColor” (1920 x 1080) is worth the upgrade? would this be an important option?

Lee

[Mario Dante]

Hi Alex:
I´m using a dell xps 15 with same specs, my question here is, if is there a proper way to set up or make adjustments on the software (GPU settings, Os settings, adobe preferences) in order to improve and make it faster, sometimes the rendering time with Ae and Ps 3D becomes kind of upsetting. Any advise will be helpful!!! Thanks!

[Alex Schwindt]

Hey Mario – adjusting GPU and OS settings is a bit “above my pay grade” unfortunately. Hopefully someone else here on the forum can point you in the right direction…

alex schwindt
alexschwindt.com
alexschwindt.typepad.com

[Shruti Sruchika]

If you bought Dell XPS 15 with an i7 Sandy Bridge CPU (base price – additional RAM, SSD, and W7Pro) in $1,100,then it is a good deal.Remember for future if you are confused in various price comparision of laptop any thing in different online shopping site then go to https://pricegenie.in/ .In this site you will get various price comparision of your product from different online shopping site in one place.The website helps users find the cheapest price for any product on a single click.