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Home ? Tech Help ? Will the Dell i7559-763BLK work well for Muvizu?

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04/12/2016 11:05:48

mindiflyth
mindiflyth
Posts: 77 		I need a new laptop, and I want one that can really handle Muvizu well. I got my current Lenovo a couple of years ago, specifically looking for a good Muvizu machine, and it's never been up to the job. I want a machine that will give me a smooth animation experience, and also hopefully be good for video editing.

I'm looking at the Dell i7559-763BLK, which is currently for sale on Amazon. Here's the link. I THINK it should be a good machine for the job, but I really don't want a repeat of my Lenovo debacle where everything looked fine on paper and then I got the machine and it wasn't up to the job.

There is also the i7559-2512BLK, available right now for about $150 more. That price would be really high for me, but I might be willing to go for it if the difference in performance would really be worth it. In other words, if the 763BLK will get the job done, I'll take it! But if the 763BLK is going to frustrate me a lot, I'd bite the bullet and go for the 2512BLK.


(To answer some questions before anybody asks 'em: For various reasons I'm determined to get this on Amazon, I don't have the tech knowledge to fiddle around putting my own machine together, and yes I do want a laptop instead of a desktop.)
edited by mindiflyth on 04/12/2016
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04/12/2016 12:07:01

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Hi,
I'm going to start by doing exactly what you asked us not to do. You will see a significant benefit if you buy a desktop PC rather than a laptop because the manufacturers don't have to worry about space and power limitations.

Anywho, since you have specifically stated that you want a laptop and nothing else, I'll have to go with it. Both those laptops should perform roughly the same where Muvizu's involved because they both have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB GPU. This is not to be confused with the GTX960(not m) when looking for performance comparisons online. I think the cheaper of the two will give you a better user experience because it has a dedicated full size SSD which will make everything load near instantly. You may want to spend the money you saved on an external USB 3.0 drive though because 256GB is going to fill up quickly if you're making videos.
In short, I think that $660 laptop is pretty good value and should be powerful enough for Muvizu.


Out of curiosity, what are the specs of your current laptop?
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04/12/2016 12:58:39

mindiflyth
mindiflyth
Posts: 77 		I currently have a Lenovo g510. Just checked, and I have an I5-4200M @ 2.5 GHZ, 8 GB memory installed, integrated chip. I looked at a comparison of the 4200M and the 6300HQ, and they rank the 4200M as better! According to the Lenovo specs on this listing on Amazon, my current laptop sounds like it'd be just as good or better for Muvizu than the Dell. But this thing has been a clunker from day one, I hate it. It's only two years old and it acts like it's from 2003, with keys falling off or just failing to respond, a failing power supply, lots of slowdowns, freezing up, etc. I really, really want to replace it, but just looking at the specs of the Dell vs the Lenovo it almost looks like the Dell might be a downgrade!
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04/12/2016 13:13:55

MrDrWho13Muvizu mogulExperimental user
MrDrWho13
Posts: 2220 		Muvizu relies heavily on the GPU (Graphics processing unit) of your PC because it's using the Unreal 3 game engine. Your current laptop doesn't have any dedicated GPU, and instead is using the CPU (processor) for both general processing and graphics processing. It's also sharing the RAM with the rest of your system.
The Dell has a dedicated GPU (one of the best of the second-newest generation) for processing the graphics data (which is what Muvizu's using all the time). It also has 4GB of dedicated video RAM which means it won't cause other programs to crash from the general purpose RAM being used up.
Your current laptop may have a better CPU but Muvizu needs a powerful GPU.

On a related note, a lot of the slowdowns you experience with your current laptop may come from the HDD. A HDD is made from a spinning magnetic disk with a small arm that moves over it to retrieve data. This arm can only move so fast and if your laptop is trying to retrieve a lot of data at a single time then it will stop everything until it can get this data. An SSD is a drive made of chips (rather than a spinning disk) which has no moving parts and can achieve much higher read/write speeds. The Dell laptop with the i5 has a full size SSD (256GB) so everything stored on there (including Windows) should load up very fast. The Dell with the i7 (a better CPU) only has 8GB of SSD space so only your most used programs will load up fast and everything else will load as fast as your current laptop. You're paying extra for the additional 750GB of storage space (albeit slower storage) and the more powerful processor.

I hope this is a good enough explanation but I'm happy to go over anything if you didn't understand.
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04/12/2016 13:25:12

mindiflyth
mindiflyth
Posts: 77 		No, that makes sense to me. I've dithered over getting a new laptop endlessly and I've never seen the 763BLK for sale at such a low price. Unless somebody convinces me the Dell with the I7 is better I think I'll finally just take the plunge with the 763BLK!
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Home ? Tech Help ? Will the Dell i7559-763BLK work well for Muvizu?

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Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.