Evaluating Laptop Specs for Video - Limited Offerings

[Billy Ramone]

Hello, great and powerful Adobe community.  Apparently, I can't install the latest Photoshop updates because my machine is running Windows version 20H2.  I'm told I'd need to upgrade to version 22H2 to run the update, but my machine doesn't support that version of Windows, so I've put in for a computer upgrade.  I expect other CS apps will also outgrow my current machine soon and want to get ahead of it.

Since telecommuting is a thing now, I'm thinking of ditching my tower for a laptop.  I submitted specs for a laptop based on the minimum requirements for Premier and AfterEffects listed on the Adobe website.  However, because I work for a government agency, I'm being asked to choose a machine from available inventory.  The following option was suggested to me:

HP ProBook 445 G9

CPU :Ryzen 5 5625U

32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200

512GB PCIe NVMe Value Solid State Drive

14 inch FHD

HD Webcam

I'm not a tech-head anymore, but I am an experienced graphic designer and video producer (25 years).  Looking for something that doesn't stutter during RAM previews and has reasonable rendering times.  I was hoping for a larger screen and two 1TB internal SSDs (one to store footage and the other to render to).  I'm not seeing any GPU listed here, but the B&H Photo website description of this laptop lists "integrated AMD Radeon graphics," without naming a specific card.

I have the option to requisition a custom machine, but navigating that process in the public sector can be a real headache.  Do you think we'd be satisfied with the performance of the laptop on offer?  If not, what improvements would you recommend?

My thanks in advance for any advice or assistance. 

B

[John T Smith]

I build my own with Intel, so I don't know anything about Ryzen

Laptop ideas https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/best-laptops-for-video-editing

This has some laptop discussion, and includes 2 recommendation links from Puget Systems... copied from Peru Bob
https://community.adobe.com/t5/video-hardware/premiere-pro-hardware-articles-to-read-before-you-buy-...

[RjL190365]

First of all, that "AMD Radeon Graphics" is not a discrete GPU at all, but is actually integrated into that laptop's CPU. As such, it does not have its own discrete VRAM at all, but instead steals a good portion of your system's main RAM for itself. And because of the Windows memory management, the "stolen" portion of the system RAM becomes completely unavailable to the rest of that laptop,

As a result of all that, expect it to choke very badly in such creation programs.

[Billy Ramone]

That's exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of.  I think I'm going to lobby for an actual multimedia workstation instead of taking this office machine.  Thanks for the heads-up.  Appreciated!

[RjL190365]

By the way, is there any way at all to update your desktop's Windows 10 from the 20H2 (which is now no longer supported by Microsoft) to 22H2? Although your current desktop is not officially supported for 22H2, you should be able to install that version eventually. Unfortunately, you will not be able to install the able to install the 22H2 version directly over the 20H2 version without updating first to the 21H2 version.

[Billy Ramone]

Honestly not sure.  We initially only asked for the OS to be updated, but our ITS department told me that our machines weren't compatible.  I don't have the expertise to push back on that or the time to do my own research, so I took the lazy way out and posted the question here.  Lol.  Based on my experience working in the public sector, I'm not 100% confident that my ITS rep knows his stuff, but I'd have to educate myself before I'd challenge his advice.  Figured this was a good starting point.

[Billy Ramone]

So, it took a while (our ITS unit has been less than responsive), but I finally got some solid specs for the laptops on offer.  Seems underwhelming for a multimedia workstation, but looking for another opinon.  Is this thing going to choke playing an unrendered video project in real time?  What could be improved here to make this into something that can deftly handle low to mid-level intensity A/V editing and large graphic design files?  I'm thinking 32MB of RAM is a no-brainer, but not sure how the processor or graphics card rates.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

HP ProBook 445 G9

CPU: Ryzen 5 5625U

RAM: 16GB (1x16GB) DDR4 3200

Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe Value Solid State Drive

14 inch FHD

HD Webcam

Asked about the graphics processor specifically and was told this:

 Radeon RX Vega 6 (Ryzen 4000)

TGP	15 W
Type	Integrated
Fabrication process	7 nm
GPU base clock	0 MHz
GPU boost clock	1500 MHz
Memory size	System Shared
Memory type	DDR4
Memory speed	3.2 Gbps
Shading units (cores)	384
Texture mapping units (TMUs)	24
Raster operations pipelines (ROPs)	8