Recommended laptop for DxO 6

Honestly, for that much money I would look for a 27" quality screen plus a tower – provided you don’t want to move around with your electronics.

Hi @Wolfgang

in Germany similar Notebooks like detected are on a price level like other Notebooks with Nvidia gpus.
The 3500 are in NZD not in Euro :innocent:

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Ok, than that’s a difference!

Yes - other brand laptops with similar specs are actually more expensive here in NZ.

I am uncertain as to what the higher priced one offers, as I don’t entirely understand the specs. But I am assuming a faster, more powerful processor, as well as more powerful graphics card …

Happy to be enlightened!

LOTS of memory and SSD for main drive will help

The CPU. can be of least concern imo.

GPU: Have a look at this: DxO DeepPRIME Processing Times - Google Drive

This post will also give you an idea of how speed relates to power (diminishing returns).

Not really. 16GB is more than DXO will utilize. SSD helps overall speed but DXO doesn’t do tons of Disk IO for raw files like a video editor would do for video files. Yeah SSD makes everything faster but…

You will benefit most from CPU speed, CPU cores, GPU power (only during exporting DeepPRIME) and memory bus speed.

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I recently got the Dell Inspiron Plus 14 with the i7 CPU and Nvidea GPU. The screen is 14", 2.2k and is 100% sRGB. Very pleased with the system performance with DxO Photolab 5, my only grumble is that the battery life is average at best.

It also comes in a 16" version too, with otherwise similar specs, I believe.

AMD has just announced new laptop CPUs with first Notebooks to arrive in March (AMD Ryzen 7940HS). They are supposed to include a dedicated AI chip that they say is faster than Apple’s M2. The question is, will Photolab and other software support that kind of chip? It is for sure an interesting development, myself I want to wait a bit to see if that allows me to buy something without dedicated GPU.

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This is exciting news. I’ve previously read that Intel are looking to add an AI processor to their chips this year too.

I agree, it would be brilliant if Photolab is able to leverage these neural units for DeepPrime like it does with the Apple M1/2 SoCs.

The only downside I see for Windows users is that with AMD and Intel, Photolab has two systems it would need to be compatible with whereas with Apple they just have the one, so I hope DxO is willing to put in the effort to work with the offerings from both manufacturers.

People often overspend on hardware as they are too focused on export performance. You can spend a ton of money to cut down on export speed but does this really matter that much? Most important at least for a casual hobbyist is that the editing experience is very snappy and smooth. To achieve this, you only need a half decent machine. 16GB of ram and a mid-range CPU are enough, and GPU is only relevant when you export.

If you want to spend around NZ$3k then I would take a very good look at the current MacBook Pro 14 or 16 inch base models. They are now often discounted (10-20%). You would get a fantastic price to performance ratio, a class leading display and incredible battery life. I didn’t think any Windows machine can offer this at the moment.

Disclaimer, I own a powerful Windows PC and a 14 inch MacBook Pro (10/16/16 CPU/GPU/Ram) and the MacBook is incredible for editing. Even the base model is super smooth.

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Like in most things, it all depends. If someone regularly exports a large number of very large raw files with lots of edits and DeepPRIME XD applied, they may find the export time disappointedly slow with a lower end supported GPU. Of course the same exercise with an unsupported GPU would likely be completely unacceptable.

Mark

Mark, that is why I said ‘casual hobbyist’. For more demanding professionals or enthusiasts speed matters more.

Let’s be honest, what difference does it make if export time for a day’s worth shoot of say 500 images if it takes 30 minutes or an hour to export when the editing experience is very smooth regardless and likely took a lot more time than the final export.

I am just saying that this is a good way to save money if someone wants to. They would still have a great editing experience which matters most. Same applies to video editing.

As I said, as in most things it all depends. What works for you might not be the best option for someone else’s requirements, casual shooter or not. Obviously if cost is a major factor than compromises must be made.

Mark.

Mark, we are going in circles. I just stated an option for someone who wants to buy a new machine. I see it so often that people don’t realize this speed trade off as an OPTION.

My statement is still correct. DXO won’t utilize more than 16GB. If you have a 16GB RAM disk well then yeah you need an EXTRA 16GB for that. That’s kind of “duh” right?

I have 40GB in my system. But DXO runs fine with 16.

Actually you will. I purchased a gaming laptop with 8 core Ryzen 5900HS CPU and 3070GPU with 8GB of VRAM and 16GB of main memory and it screams running Photolab. Very fast for edits and very fast exports with DeepPRIME.

I eventually upgraded it to be able to support video editing with 8K sources. And Photolab didn’t run faster after the upgrade.

You can keep trying to dig your hole deeper but you are still wrong. 16GB is plenty to run Photolab.

The single largest improvement I have done is purchase a powerful GPU. Most photography software (including DXO) utilizes the GPU for other things than exporting. I use a Windows 11 desktop computer with 8.00 GB of RAM, and a good GPU, and everything runs great.

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DXO only needs a few gigs. Seriously. Not sure why you keep arguing. Take however much total Ram you have in your system. Make your ram disk larger so that only 16GB of ram is left and try it. You will see.

I.e. if you have 64GB of ram make a 48GB RAM disk and try it. It works just fine and no slower.

Im done arguing with you. You are arguing just to argue. And you are still wrong.

Thanks for all the input. I am happy with my decision …