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Question

A new laptop for mainly 3d design work, but maybe gaming?

Feb 23, 2015 10:52AM PST

Hey guys,

New to the forums, and I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for by searching. I am fairly new to the PC world and have a few potentially simple questions. If I were to look at gaming laptops, would they normally be the best for design work? Mainly I am looking at an MSI Stealth Pro that has these specs:
Intel Core i7-4710HQ (2.5GHz, 6MB Cache)
12GB DDR3L 1600 MHz
1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive, 128GB mSATA Solid-State Drive
17.3-inch Full HD eDP Anti-glare Screen; NVIDIA Geforce GTX970M with 3GB GDDR5 VRAM
Windows 8.1

I have done a bit of research and found that this thing has poor battery life and gets pretty toasty; however I am prepared to deal with this as long as it keeps up. I need something I can lug back and forth to work and use at home for different hobbies. I am under the assumption that basically if it is good for gaming it will be decent for rendering 3d images in my design software, being mostly blender/photoshop/Autocad123. Is there any aspect of laptop hardware that I may be overlooking? Thanks a bunch for the help. Also, I understand that this may be a bit overboard judging by the price, but I would like to have the flexibility of getting into complex video editing and potentially a bit of gaming as well.


On a side note, I recently came upon an interesting concept. Is it at all reasonable to try and maintain an older laptop with decent hardware and use its basics on the go, and have an external video card of my choice and home and office with an added monitor? Or will I need more than just GPU power for my design work? Thanks, Thomas

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Sounds right for battery times.
Feb 24, 2015 6:46AM PST

With such high end GPU and more that should get a few hours tops. What similar laptop did you find that got say 2 hours while gaming or editing HD Video? So far I've yet to see this. Maybe next year?
Bob

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Battery Life
Feb 24, 2015 8:18AM PST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8410/msi-gs60-ghost-pro-3k-review/6

I read 2 hours on a forum some where, though after trying to look it up i found that link. As it turns out this is for the GTX870M graphics card on the older model MSI Ghost Pro. Perhaps with the newer GTX970m it will run more efficiently? Either way I don't plan on being far from a charger. Thanks for the help
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Looked up this recently.
Feb 24, 2015 8:25AM PST