Advice about hardware compatibility - video card

[Eclipse79]

Hello, 

I plan to replace a very old workstation (equipped with a NVidia Qadro k600) with a laptop. I have seen some models, all of them have:

- 32Gb RAM

- 1Tb SSD

- i7 processor (12th gen)

- Videocard... I have some doubts about this... does anyone knows if there are known problems with these models? NVIDIA Quadro T1200 4Gb, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 4GB, NVIDIA RTX A2000 8Gb, NVIDIA RTX A1000 4 Gb

Thanks!

[Peter Spier]

Unless you are doing video editing I doubt you will notice much difference between video cards. My laptop (a gaming machine I use for graphics) looks to have pretty similar specs with a NVidia GeForce 1660 Ti card with 6Gb. The only glitch I ever see is an occasional transient blank screen on the external monitor, and I hve no idea if that's the video card or Windows causing it.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This. Pretty much "any good video card" that isn't something like Intel motherboard graphics. InDesign is not demanding since it does very little active video, rendering, etc. compared to the video apps or even Photoshop.

I was still running a 1050Ti (Nvidia's mighty mouse card) until the middle of this year; replaced it only because it was a little overwhelmed — emphasis on little — with a new 4K+5K monitor combo.

It's the "laptop" part that bothers me. I feel like to many people buy them by default when the portability isn't needed, and thus pay too much for crappy ergonomonics and almost zero repairability and upgrade. But maybe that's just me.

[Eclipse79]

Hello, I forgot to say that he uses Photoshop too.

The choice of laptop is due to the fact that the employee sometime works at home. Until now he connected to workstation through a VPN, using another pc.

Thanks

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

You/he'll definitely want a mid-range Nvidia or equivalent card for all but the simplest Photoshop use. It's video that really demands power, though; a more modest card will just take a few seconds with any complex render or transformation in PS.

Yes, I have a 'work' laptop here for one of my clients. I can only use it by docking it into my full-size console. I get aches all over watching people use them, at table height, hunched over in a bad chair... and that's for office/text use.

[Eclipse79]

Thank you for sharing your opinions

Bye

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Get AS MUCH RAM as you can 🙂

And rather forget about "online" remote working - latest version of InDesign - CC 22023 / V18 - is extremely fussy about the access time / lag to files...

[Eclipse79]

Well, I hope that 32Gb will be enough! 😂

[Robert Tkaczyk]

Only 32gb? 😄 😄

Desktop workstation, not laptop:

 

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

For hardware comparisons and specs, see https://www.tomshardware.com/  Been using them for decades, back in the day when my shop built custom workstations for digital media.