Hi I am currently shopping for a new laptop that will run zbrush
is 8 G or RAM overkill or will that be twice as good as 4 G
and also does any one know if DDR3 RAM will make a big difference over DDR2?
Thanks
Heather
I’ve been told Zbrush can use up to 4 GB ram, so if you get 4, take into account that sometimes you’ll be running Z with about 3 GB cause of other processes. If you have 6-8, you’ll mostly be able to fully utilize 4 gb for Zbrush.
about the type of ram. If you go i7 high end , you have no choice in DDR, it has to be DDR3 , if you go lower, DDR2 or DDR3 doesn’t really matter. If DDR2 ends up drastically cheaper, go for it, because DDR3 boost won’t be worth a higher price.
Heather, the numbers 2,3 or 4 are tied to a frequency. That has to match the laptops chip set requirements. You are not at liberty to chose, it is a requirement of the system you own. Like driving your regular gas car with super gas will not make it drive faster. Check out what your laptop needs and go with that.
Here is some more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_RAM
If it’s a 64Bit OS get as much Ram as you can afford. If not… take 4GB.
Lemo
Hi The Namek and lemonnado
Thanks for responding and thank you for the correction : actually I meant is there any difference between the 1333MHz DDR3 Versus 1066Mhz DDR3 at 8G for zbrush
it seems to make a big difference to the price in some laptops-
and I will definitely be using Windows 7 64bit either way.
Heather
You will not really notice the speed of the memory while working.
If you start to render large images, sort a lot of data, copy and past huge data sets for quite a while you will start to be able to measure the difference in throughput. Much more important is the speed of the disk and the quality of the graphic card. ZBrush is not to critical about the graphics card, but you are likely to use PS and other programs as well. So take care that the graphics are not just some build in Intel crapola el cheapo chipset. Laptop disks are notorious regarding low speeds compared to desktop disks. If there is a chance, go with the quickest one you can get for that model. Be prepared to shell out at least twice the dough for a Laptop compared to a desktop to achieve similar performance. Or accept less performance. Life’s a compromise…
best of luck
Lemo
PS:IN case of Win7 64… Definitely go with the most memory you can afford. That will keep things running real smooth. Not enough memory and your application and windows start to bumb each other out of the memory onto the disk and back and forth and back… so besides the disk light flickering you will start to think about retirement…
I’d reinforce about the graphics card. That is a Big Deal. It’s also what drives the price of suitable laptops way up. Not so much with ZBrush but with everything else. Even PS is using the card now.
For render yes, the faster RAM matters. If your doing stills for yourself it may not matter. I’d say 6 gigs minimum and 64 bit. The OS sucks up part of the RAM. When I made the jump to a decent 64 bit machine the number of polys I could deal with smoothly went up quite a bit.
Thanks for the advice- at the moment I only have 2G and I get the chunky pixel brick look when I use the brushs with a complicated alpha texture like the cell one
2G… You’d make somersaults just doubling that.
But the 64Bit OS also gives you more than just access to the memory.
It also let’s the processor run in it’s fav mode and thus gain somewhere around 10-20% depending on what it does. If physical mem runs out in a 64Bit system it fakes memory using disk space. Performance goes down the drain, but nothing crashes.
L
Graphics card, Graphics card, Graphics card is most important.
I have a HP 1006tx laptop
2.4ghz dual core
4g ram
9600m gt graphics
32 bit vista
I love it! I copes well with zbrush, maya, photoshop, illustrator, winamp, skype and other app at the same time easy peasy!
When I bought it I was worried that I might have bought a slow laptop, instead it was like breathing in crisp fresh air!
I was wondering whether having 4G would be sufficient for zbrush - that would save about 800 dollars here in Australia for a laptop
Do you set your system preferences in compact mem for the max 4096 ?
No I have always set it to default. I think if you are looking at a laptop
thats 8 gig and you can afford it then go for it! Just know that if you can’t
afford it, that a 4gig is going to be just fine. I wouldn’t buy a quad core
lappy at the moment because the max is 1.6ghz (as far as I have seen) too
expensive for a small boost in processing speed.
So I chose this because of the decent speed for a dual core, decent ram
and a decent graphics card. And it was cheap as! It has a whole load of
dumb features like fingerprint scanner and dvb-t card that doesnt work in
my country. The tuner card works though so I can get antenna just not
satelite. But that didn’t matter so much since I was only after affordable
power.
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Laptops/Laptops/HP/auction-294008684.htm
This is almost the same as my beasty. It’s a step up better than mine. and
only $100 more than what I paid. I’d buy this, but I’d also want to hear
from what Lemo thinks about it. I’m pretty sure he knows his shizzle about
comps, Zbrush and what would be best suited.