Laptop recommendations for PI

[tferrari]

I'm looking for high screen resolution and processing power.

Apple Macbook Pro seems like the obvious choice for Apple products, but you're going to pay for it.

What about a laptop with a Windows OS? I'm certainly more familiar with it.

Any obvious choices out there? Can you guys give me your experience with the laptops you are currently using or perhaps what you would suggest?

Thanks in advance.

[dgbarar]

Hi,

I am using a late 2013 15" Mac Book Pro with Intel I7 four core 2.6 GHZ processor, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB PCI SSD.  My benchmark statistics are as follows:

- Total Performance = 5332
- CPU Performance = 5562
- Swap Performance = 4788

I am not certain if these results are good, bad or average for a laptop--I hope they are good because I sure paid a lot for this machine. LOL.  It will be interesting to see as others make recommendations what performance results they obtain.

Cheers,

Don Barar

[Torsinadoc]

no lap top here but using a mac desktop
i7, 3.5Ghz, 8 ram; fusion drive

- Total Performance = 4216
- CPU Performance = 5924
- Swap Performance = 1959

I have no idea if this is good but I have zero issues with PI working quickly.

[jerryyyyy]

Before you buy that pricy MacBook Pro, check out the Dell M3800 MacBook killer.... that is what I am using. 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/735359-dell-precision-m3800-owner-s-review.html

[dgbarar]

Hi Jerry,

How is your Dell M3800 configured?  What are the PI benchmark results?

Don 

[jerryyyyy]

Dell M3800

*******************************************************************************
The Official PixInsight Benchmark version 1.0
Copyright (C) 2014 Pleiades Astrophoto. All Rights Reserved.
*******************************************************************************

Benchmark version ...... 1.00.07
Input checksum ......... 2cd72b67e12fff2812ef5b5da054ab2a70a25e23
Serial number .......... TJQ620M1X7SW1MALP86EF3T15I5O6WL4

CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. GenuineIntel
CPU model .............. Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4702HQ CPU @ 2.20GHz

System Information
Platform ............... Windows
Operating system ....... Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.02.1098 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 8
Total memory size ...... 15.905 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 02:41.71
CPU time ............... 01:19.17
Swap time .............. 01:22.49
Swap transfer rate ..... 200.924 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 2909
CPU performance ........ 4781
Swap performance ....... 1113

[dgbarar]

Hi Jerry et. al.

Interpreting the performance differences between the MBP and M3800, for $700 more for the MBP you get 80% improvement in total performance - if I am interpreting correctly.  Most of that probably coming from the PCIe SSD's in the Mac.  Is this a good deal?  As always, depends on the needs of the buyer.

Don

[Thomas]

Personally I wouldn't buy a Dell again as I found a lot of problems for the use of our hobby... (I bought a brand new Dell VOSTRO with illuminated keyboard and placed a very fast Samsung SSD 250GB Hard drive in it...the performance isn't the problem , but some other things to note.

Time drift per day ~ 2-4 seconds.
Using any WLAN traffic while downloading an image over USB will results in stripes (picture pattern)  in the image.
If the screen went on or off (from screensaver or energy save option after x minutes ) while downloading this will also result in stripes (picture pattern) in the image.
It is not possible just to turn off the screen (to save energy) with a keyboard combination .

This might be different from other Dell Laptops so just a hint...



Thomas

[jerryyyyy]

Hi Jerry et. al.

Interpreting the performance differences between the MBP and M3800, for $700 more for the MBP you get 80% improvement in total performance - if I am interpreting correctly.  Most of that probably coming from the PCIe SSD's in the Mac.  Is this a good deal?  As always, depends on the needs of the buyer.

Don

Yeah, no free lunch.  The I7 in the MacBook are also running at 2.6 Ghz rather than 2.2.  We cannot use Macs where I work. 

[dgbarar]

Hi Jerry,

There is no free lunch.  For better or worse it is still a Windows world.  I have alway been a Windows user and only last December made the switch to Mac.  It took me about a month to get used to OSX.  The MBP had been mostly a good experience.  Still, almost a year later there are many aspects to Windows that I prefer to OSX: 1) file handling, 2) less reliance on keyboard shortcuts, for example.

Don Barar

[Josh Lake]

I've heard it said that the best Windows machine you can get is a Macbook Pro that boots into Windows natively... 

I, too, have a rMBP, 2012, 2.6 GHz i7 with 8 GB of RAM and an SSD. I'm very happy with it, and something more modern would be a further improvement. I haven't run the PI benchmark yet but I will.

[dgbarar]

Hi All,

Does anyone out there have a laptop running Linux? It would be terrific to see what the benchmarks are with the Linux OS.

Don Barar

[jnavas1]

I think these are really good for a laptop:

http://www.mountain.es/portatiles

And you can configure them as you wish.


My benchmark:

*******************************************************************************
The Official PixInsight Benchmark version 1.0
Copyright (C) 2014 Pleiades Astrophoto. All Rights Reserved.
*******************************************************************************

Benchmark version ...... 1.00.07
Input checksum ......... 2cd72b67e12fff2812ef5b5da054ab2a70a25e23
Serial number .......... Y996TXIOY0B99I97N9P9V26DUA8FS4G9

CPU Identification
CPU vendor ............. GenuineIntel
CPU model .............. Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz

System Information
Platform ............... Windows
Operating system ....... Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Core version ........... PixInsight Core 01.08.02.1098 (x64)
Logical processors ..... 8
Total memory size ...... 31.921 GiB

Execution Times
Total time ............. 01:57.38
CPU time ............... 01:09.17
Swap time .............. 00:48.17
Swap transfer rate ..... 344.082 MiB/s

Performance Indices
Total performance ...... 4008
CPU performance ........ 5472
Swap performance ....... 1906

*******************************************************************************