Best Laptop for running Premiere Pro

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
November 17, 2017
12 replies
71557 views

Hey Guys,

I want to purchase a new laptop, looking for something value for money which is future proof (4K, 5K videos) for at least 4-5 years. I am currently using Premiere Pro and these are my options from the leading companies -

Apple -

Amazon.com: Apple 15" MacBook Pro, Retina, Touch Bar, 2.9GHz Intel Core i7 Quad Core, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Space Gray, M…

Microsoft -

Amazon.com: Microsoft Surface Book 2 (Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 256GB) - 15": Computers & Accessories

Am also open to Lenovo, ASUS and HP. My brother would also be using this laptop for his development work occasionally, he is a full stack developer. Please help, this is all very confusing and I don't want to buy something that costs a bomb for no reason.

Thanks.

D

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R

RjL190365

Legend

If you're going to run Premiere Pro CC 2017 or 2018, forget about either of those two: These newer versions of Premiere Pro no longer support switchable graphics (or specifically, have the within-Premiere GPU selector disabled at executable level to the point where any attempt to modify the file to enable it will render the program completely unusable). And if those two laptops provide no provision at all whatsoever in the BIOS/EFI to disable the Intel graphics, the Premiere Pro renderer will become "permanently" locked to the integrated on-CPU Intel graphics, which may use either OpenCL or software-only MPE. And the integrated Intel graphics, especially in these laptops, will be excruciatingly sluggish even in OpenCL mode.

And Peru Bob is correct that it's impossible to "future-proof" any PC that long, in light of the fact that hardware and software companies do not like to support anything that's more than three years old.

Randall

D

dhruvs85863305Author

Participant

Then what do you suggest I should buy?

Best,

Dhruv

R

RjL190365

Legend

Whichever laptop you buy, ensure that it does not list both the Intel HD or UHD Graphics and a discrete GPU as included in the same unit. If it does, then that's a giveaway that it uses switchable graphics - and the laptop manufacturer may not offer any provision at all whatsoever in the BIOS or EFI to disable the Intel graphics and thus force everything to use only the discrete GPU. (To be sure, all recent Intel mobile CPUs include some form of integrated HD graphics, but it's up to the laptop manufacturer to disable this integrated IGP or leave it enabled if the company adds a discrete GPU chip on to the laptop's system board.)

And software switches do not work at all for Premiere; Premiere will simply ignore the manual software GPU selector and will use only the primary graphics chip (the one used to boot the laptop into Windows, which in every case is the vastly inferior-performing Intel HD graphics).