Hi all
I am a games design student looking for advice on what would be a good laptop to run XNA 4.
I have a decent PC which I have been using for the last couple of years for 3ds max and more recent XNA 3, But this year I will be travelling alot so I need to invest in a laptop.
Ive been saving over the summer especially for a laptop, so all recommendations and advice on laptops that you have successfull experience with ranging from low to high end would be appreciated, and any which would work well with 3ds max would be a bonus.
Thanks all for your time-
XNA 4.0 Laptop advice and recommendations
Hmmm well i can play alot of the 2d games on my low end toshiba laptop, which is a 2.1ghz single core amd sempron, with integrated gpu. And i can also render the series 4 riemers tutorial for XNA fairly well at a consistent 60 fps. Im also able to use blender fairly well, but definitely not for sculpting ect. But anything more than that would probably be impossible without taking a serious hit to my cpu.
So i would really suggest if you get a new laptop, to make sure you get a pretty decent one thats multi core and has a pretty good gpu card. You may come to a point where you will want to upgrade to perhaps slimdx, so you can use directx10 and 11. I can not run any of the cool directx11 sdk samples on this laptop, i have to use my gfs hp intel icore3 with integrated graphics in the CPU to render stuff like that.
So i would really suggest if you get a new laptop, to make sure you get a pretty decent one thats multi core and has a pretty good gpu card. You may come to a point where you will want to upgrade to perhaps slimdx, so you can use directx10 and 11. I can not run any of the cool directx11 sdk samples on this laptop, i have to use my gfs hp intel icore3 with integrated graphics in the CPU to render stuff like that.
I found the high end Dells were a) very expensive and b) not really configurable enough.
After some research I went with a Sager from http://xoticpc.com - I'm very happy with what I got. 16Gb ram, SSD, DX11 GPU for (at the time about 3 months ago) about $1600. That was 4-500 less than a similar spec'd dell. There's other Sager sellers if you don't like those guys.
I found these fourms to be very useful for research http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/ - they even have a place you can post a spec and folk will recommend stuff http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/
The only thing I could not get was a touch screen - I dabble with phone dev too and having a touch screen laptop for that (and possibly windows 8) would have been useful. However all the touchscreen computers are tiny little things that your mom might like - not really developer machines. (apologies to anyone whose mom is a game developer).
After some research I went with a Sager from http://xoticpc.com - I'm very happy with what I got. 16Gb ram, SSD, DX11 GPU for (at the time about 3 months ago) about $1600. That was 4-500 less than a similar spec'd dell. There's other Sager sellers if you don't like those guys.
I found these fourms to be very useful for research http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/ - they even have a place you can post a spec and folk will recommend stuff http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/
The only thing I could not get was a touch screen - I dabble with phone dev too and having a touch screen laptop for that (and possibly windows 8) would have been useful. However all the touchscreen computers are tiny little things that your mom might like - not really developer machines. (apologies to anyone whose mom is a game developer).
If you want to save money, a good place to look is anything with an AMD Llano CPU, which includes quite competent integrated graphics -- 400 shader cores, which is about 5x better than any other "integrated" video solution, and roughly equivilent to an entry-level desktop GPU or lower-mid-level discrete laptop GPU. I don't have any specific models in mind, but I like Asus and Lenovo, personally.
If you're happy to spend a little more, I really love my Circa 2010 macbook (unibody) and the new ones are basically just updates to it, so it would make a nice solution. I know they have a reputation of being over-priced, and its true that they may seem that way if you make your decision based solely on their spec sheet numbers; however, I've owned several laptops and it is, by far, the hands-down best I've owned from a build quality and overall "niceness" standpoint. The huge, glass, multi-touch trackpad is amazing and I actually prefer it to hauling a wireless mouse around with me.
One general aspect I would advise you to be mindful of, is screen resolution. Coding at 1366x768 can be a bit cramped -- its workable, but not very pleasant. You'd be amazed how much nicer it is to step up to something like 1440 or 1600x900. They make a few 13-14 inchers in that range, you can get that or larger if you want to go 15.4+ inches, but personally, I never cared for such bulky laptops.
If you're happy to spend a little more, I really love my Circa 2010 macbook (unibody) and the new ones are basically just updates to it, so it would make a nice solution. I know they have a reputation of being over-priced, and its true that they may seem that way if you make your decision based solely on their spec sheet numbers; however, I've owned several laptops and it is, by far, the hands-down best I've owned from a build quality and overall "niceness" standpoint. The huge, glass, multi-touch trackpad is amazing and I actually prefer it to hauling a wireless mouse around with me.
One general aspect I would advise you to be mindful of, is screen resolution. Coding at 1366x768 can be a bit cramped -- its workable, but not very pleasant. You'd be amazed how much nicer it is to step up to something like 1440 or 1600x900. They make a few 13-14 inchers in that range, you can get that or larger if you want to go 15.4+ inches, but personally, I never cared for such bulky laptops.
Thanks all this is very useful advice and will come in handy this weekend when I part with my hard earned money
Hopefully not too much of it
Hopefully not too much of it
Actually, Samsung has released some rather nice laptops just now -- The series 7 is nearly a clone of the macbook pro's (Aluminum body, same style of glass trackpad, similar size/specs) but they come in a bit cheaper -- of course, you give up the ability to run OSX (though you might be able to turn it into a Hackintosh if you were so inclined)
Anyhow, the 14 incher is pretty svelte, having mid-level discrete graphics and a 1600x900 screen -- higher than you can get on the similar-sized 13.3" MBP. It's also got an onboard, 8GB SSD that it uses to cache your most frequently accessed files, which out to make it quite responsive. Samsung makes some nice kit, so you would do well to consider these. If I didn't already have my macbook, that 14" would be mighty enticing.
Anyhow, the 14 incher is pretty svelte, having mid-level discrete graphics and a 1600x900 screen -- higher than you can get on the similar-sized 13.3" MBP. It's also got an onboard, 8GB SSD that it uses to cache your most frequently accessed files, which out to make it quite responsive. Samsung makes some nice kit, so you would do well to consider these. If I didn't already have my macbook, that 14" would be mighty enticing.
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