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Laptop with 64gb or 128gb of memory?

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gustavoesser:
Hey guys,
I'm planning to buy a laptop for work because I plan to live as a digital nomad and occasionally move to other places.
One thing I'm not sure about is the amount of memory. If I go with 128gb I would probably get the Msi GT77 Titan, but it's quite big and the power charger is huge, there aren't many options for laptops with 128gb of memory. On the other hand, if I choose 64 gb of memory, there are many more options, smaller and lighter.
The question is with all these updates and improvements to the Corona render, do you think I could work with 64gb in any kind of project? I mostly do exterior rendering of houses and multifamily buildings.

Juraj:
I have two 128gb laptops, Titan GT77 and Dell Precision 7670, I'll write here later :- )

James Vella:
The Titan is a beast of a laptop, out of curiosity Juraj how much does it weigh including the charger & accessories in a backpack?

Gustavoesser, I think it would just come down to how often your projects exceed 64gb, if they do then you will certainly need more ram instead of trying to optimize your scenes to the nth degree.

In my specific case since I have been a 'nomad worker' for the past 5 years I have my own bias as to what my preference would be now. Here is some of my experience which may help with some of your decisions. I started with a thin 15" Gigabyte Aero which was 2.5kg + charger/accessories so 3.5kg total. I'm now rocking the 17" Asus Rog Strix, quite large compared to the previous laptop. Thermals are better (but also any laptop after 2022 will be better for thermals). I travel sometimes daily to different places/countries for work and the 17" is just too big in hindsight, also it hits 7.5kg + accessories in my backpack which can be quite limiting on some airplanes as they limit your onboard to 7kg. Now these laptops come in 18" which is even harder to fit in a backpack or even open on the plane comfortably for some light work/entertainment - at which point I wish I had of purchased a 15" or 16". Again portability is a personal choice however just giving my feedback as I was quite comfortable with the smaller laptop which still works quite well and much easier to travel with and when docked in my office I use a 27" monitor.

Thought I'd add to this regarding things like battery & cpu. I also seem to see the same thing with the current generation of laptops - AMD run more quiet with longer battery life (I get 6 hours and dead quiet on the AMD cpu doing normal tasks, intermittent rendering I can get about 4 hours with slightly louder fans but not too loud to be honest). Intel seem to be less battery life overall and much louder fans in my experience. With the AMD I actually just use the built-in GPU when doing light 3D work like modelling/materials and scene prop placement and battery runs for a long time and 0 fan noise with decent viewport speed - don't expect miracles but I actually forget I left it on sometimes instead of using the DGPU. My last intel laptop iGPU/dGPU didnt make much difference, battery life was poor but that was 2017 so difficult to compare on that front personally.

Juraj:
The 17" Titan GT77 is actually very light-weight for its class, just 3,3 KG. This type of laptops used to weight way above 4-5KG. Even now the new Alienware M18 is almost 4KG.
The same can't be said for the 330W which is not just heavy but also very big and ugly. I think the only reasonable 330W charger is from Razer, and on my travels, I use 240W GAN charger from SlimQ which is 1/3 the size and weight. It still fits only into very few bags :- ) I have plenty of big outdoor backpacks but it still fits only into one from Razer because it's so deep.

Dell Precision is 3KG as well but it's full metal chassis with much higher built quality, but no vapour chamber and no capability to cool HX Intels well.

Sadly that's pretty much it for 128GB capable laptops. Of them, the Precision is using super expensive CAMM module which I believe put it out of reach of creatives. I asked Intel to spec it like that for me but I wouldn't pay 2000 Euro for 128GB memory myself...
The Titan is using 4-Dimm slots making it 3 times cheaper. I always suggest to buy lowest config and buy aftermarket memory and SSDs. You can save 1000-2000 Euro very easily this way.

128GB come with another big limit not just for laptops but for mainstream DDR5 platforms. Both Intel 13th-gen and new Ryzen struggle to run fast memory in this configuration because 4x32GB reaches 8-ranks and that puts too much stress on the memory controller. So the fastest memory will be DDR5 limited to  4000 +/- MT/s. It doesn't affect rendering speed in my experience at all though, just mentioning it. 64GB can be run at 6000 MT/s even on laptop.

I think 64GB is enough if the laptop isn't your only workstation. I ran the Titan with 64GB and it was just fine for me with the Corona texture off-load. I just don't multi-task with so many other softwares like Photoshop at same time in such config.

That opens the doors to much more affordable Asus STRIX range laptops for example or the new Alienware or even Clevo/Eluktronics chassis. Because paying 5000+ Euro for gaming laptops is sort of absurd (the Dell was more than 8000... but that is corporate level and the CAMM has big premium on price sadly right now) esp. given these are still plastic boxes with not amazing built quality and questionable longevity.


I am also somewhat nomad with 4-5 months of travelling per year and I travel with 3 laptops, 1-2 27" Monitors and I fit all the into Land Cruiser with child and big husky dog :- ).

gustavoesser:
Hi Juraj, i think I will get the Gt77 Titan because of the memory amount. What bag do tou use to carry it?

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