Best Laptop for photography: I am considering buying a new laptop, and was wondering if a gaming laptop by MSI would be a good choice, or if it is overkill for just photography. I use...

Octagon

I am considering buying a new laptop, and was wondering if a gaming laptop by MSI would be a good choice, or if it is overkill for just photography. I use Photoshop CS6 and have been a bit frustrated with the processing time assembling panoramas, doing HDR and macro focus stacking, also glare from the screen is a problem sometimes. I currently have a laptop with an Intel i7 processor, 8 GB ram and and SSD drive. I am considering a gaming laptop with a Core i7-7700HQ processor, 16 GB ram, 256 GB M.2 SSD and a 1 TB HDD, a 15.6in Full HD matte monitor, GTX video card and Windows 10 Home. I have been told the the M.2 SSD standard is much faster than a regular SSD. Another consideration is portability. Some of the MSI laptops are HUGE and have all kinds of gaming features that I probably will never use. Does anyone have experience and/or advice.

RickL Loc: Vail, Az

We use apple products, a Mac and a Macbook pro. it is fine for us but you may need a gaming laptop.. There are so many great ones available. Of course there are some like Dell to stay away from.

Octagon

Thanks Rick, I have not considered any Mac Laptop products, always thought they were too thin and fragile for my thick fumble fingers. Maybe I should widen my search.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Octagon wrote:

I am considering buying a new laptop, and was wond... (show quote)

If you want to not have to wait for stuff to happen, you'll want a 512 GB SSD NVMe m.2 drive, a 7200 rpm 1 TB hard drive, an NVidia Quadro Graphics card. Gaming computers are ok, but their are a bit more specialized and geared more towards video and less towards still photo editing. (they have large frame buffers for seamless and smooth video at up to 60 fps) - you don't need that much memory and other things like CUDAs since your applications will never use them. For Photoshop it's better to have strong support for Open GL and Open CL and Shader.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html

You might want to look at some of these by MSI, all of which have Quadro graphics cards.

http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-gaming-laptops-ct-118-96-98.html#!/graphicscard=81-186&no_cache=true&p=clear

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Gene51 wrote:

If you want to not have to wait for stuff to happe... (show quote)

As far as Apple is concerned, you can get something to match the spec of a workstation laptop like one of those from MSI, but you won't have the better graphics, you'll have to get an external hard drive, and by the time you're done you'll end up spending about an extra $1000 to get almost the same performance.

If you want the best, then you'd end up spending even more to get a 6 or 8 core XEON processor, more ram, more internal storage, but I think that would be a bit overkill and you'd hit the point of diminishing returns.

RickL Loc: Vail, Az

My girls used the macbook pros in high school. pretty tough despite size.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I use a gaming laptop from ASUS that is now a couple years old. I like it a lot for Lightroom CC, Photoshop CC and Premiere Elements. I've never played a game on it.

bobmcculloch Loc: NYC, NY

The one you have now sounds way more powerful than what I'm using now with PSP, but I'm not doing focus stacking, but works with HDR and Panoramas, how long is it taking and how many frame pano's? Perhaps Adobe requires more powerful computer than PSP?

JeffR Loc: Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

Check your manual and see if you can boost the RAM in your current laptop. If so, you'll likely get the biggest bang for your bucks that way.

DavidM Loc: New Orleans, LA

Octagon wrote:

I am considering buying a new laptop, and was wond... (show quote)

For a budget laptop I would chose this for CPU, graphics, memory and storage and then purchase an IPS 25 - 27 inch monitor which is how my setup is.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1345024-REG/dell_i5577_7342blk_i7_7700hq_16gb_512ssd_1050.html

This is the monitor I use:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VJUIXOU/ref=pe_171560_250394260_em_1p_0_ti

For more money then see any of the following at this website:

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-15-inch-laptops-for-photo-and-video-editing/

ATCurry

Although I understand, from my own experience, the blinders that come up when the idea of a new computer comes to mind, you could check into expanding your computer memory to whatever is the max capable for your existing system. That is the bottleneck you are experiencing. I went from 8gb to 16gb in a 3 yr old Lenovo i7 laptop, and it made a tremendous difference running PS and LR and processing multiple images. So whatever direction you go, don't scrimp on internal memory. If you don't already have one you should also get an external monitor, and get a calibrator that will do more than one screen. Fact is, no laptop will check all the boxes fully when it comes to photo processing.

Octagon

"you'll want a 512 GB SSD NVMe m.2 drive, a 7200 rpm 1 TB hard drive, an NVidia Quadro Graphics card"

Thanks Gene,
The links are very helpful. I will have a look at the NVIDIA Quadro specs. The second row onwards, of MSI laptops is a bit out of my budget. I noticed all of the higher end MSI laptops have 8GB or more of Video RAM. Would 6GB of Video RAM be limiting for photography?

Octagon

Good point Gene!

Octagon

bobmcculloch wrote:

The one you have now sounds way more powerful than what I'm using now with PSP, but I'm not doing focus stacking, but works with HDR and Panoramas, how long is it taking and how many frame pano's? Perhaps Adobe requires more powerful computer than PSP?

Good point Bob,
I have recently purchased a Canon 5DS which produces 50 MB to 70 MB images. Focus stacking is very slow on this laptop. HDR and Panoramas are somewhat acceptable, but I still use the processing time to pour myself a coffee and read the newspaper, especially with focus stacking.

Thanks for a reality check ATCurry
The blinders definitely come up when looking at new shiny laptops with an "edge". I really liked the LED lit keyboard. The enthusiasm of the sales person demonstrating the fantastic graphics capabilities was a factor too. I am also impressed with the matte screen, my laptop has an annoying glare during certain times of the day.

Thanks DavidM,
I will have a look at your suggestions.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Octagon wrote:

"you'll want a 512 GB SSD NVMe m.2 drive, a 7200 rpm 1 TB hard drive, an NVidia Quadro Graphics card"

Thanks Gene,
The links are very helpful. I will have a look at the NVIDIA Quadro specs. The second row onwards, of MSI laptops is a bit out of my budget. I noticed all of the higher end MSI laptops have 8GB or more of Video RAM. Would 6GB of Video RAM be limiting for photography?

6 gb of vram is overkill. I run dual displays with a 2 gb Quadro 4000. My displays are 1920x1280, and the 2 gb is fine. When you have complex rendering and shading like when you use a program like SolidWorks or Kinetics 3 D Studio, with lots of solids modeling, shading and luminosity rendering, then the extra vram helps. For Photoshop and Lightroom 2 gb is fine unless you are running dual 4k or 5k displays, then you need 6 gb or more.