RIP - Laptop

[Pazzaz]

Aug 1, 2016. One day late to install Win 10 for free. Not that I really wanted to, but I did wonder if it would now be safe to allow auto updates without the threat of Win 10 being installed by Microsoft. I wanted to keep Win 7 until my laptop died. Looks like that day has come.

One long beep, two short. Either the graphics card or the motherboard. A little research reveals the nVidia FX 2800 M and 3800M cards for the W701 were specialty cards adapted for Lenovo by nVidia to work with the built in color calibrator... which wasn't worth dirt, but still, installing a non Lenovo W701 video card will screw up the bios to the extent that a formerly functional video card will no longer work. Lenovo does not list the W701 anywhere on their site. Continuous busy signal when I've tried to call. I'm not holding out much hope that it can be repaired. Besides, it could be the motherboard anyway.

I've been absolutely faithful to my W701. Haven't even glanced at another computer - no matter how cute it might be! So here I am. Devastated. Lost. Miserable. Scared. Stumbling along on my old XP machine. Boy, XP was a good system... but it ain't gonna run video processing. sob! And it absolutely ain't gonna run 4k. Heck, my W701 choked on 4k so that I had given up on it even though two of my cameras will film in 4k.

So... Clevo or Sager? Other brands? I'm so out of the loop I don't have a clue as to what the name of processors are or how much RAM is much or which video cards can take the heat these days.

I'll need eSATA so I can connect my various drives holding video footage and USB 3 unless there is something faster now. An IPS screen. I recently bought a 2.5 Samsung solid state drive. I'm accustomed to having 2 full TB in my machine and have many 500 GB, 1T and higher external drives. My latest video storage drive is a 3.5 inch, 4TB that I connect via eSATA.

My screen was 17 inch and it was too small. Is there a way to have something like a desktop case holding drives connected to a keyboard - screen combination I could hold in my lap while in bed? I don't know if I want a desktop or laptop. I suppose I could continue to use this XP, small laptop for the internet.

I'm a touch typist and I've loved the tactile IBM keyboard. I'll sure miss that. Most of all I'll miss the integrated Wacom tablet surface.

If possible I'd like to have the OS on a disc. Having Win7 on a disc has saved my bacon more than once. I understand that new machines are all set up in such a way that anything older than Win 10 can no longer be installed. We will assimilate.

All your thoughts and suggestions are welcome. Thanks,

Paz

[Steve Grisetti]

What programs will you be running on it and how much can you spend, Pazzaz?

[Pazzaz]

It's me, Steve. _Paz_, Pazzaz, Pazpazzaz, Patrice. I couldn't remember my password. Can't find my avatar on this old machine. Maybe you'll recognize me from this one.

Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Camtasia's screen capture, Dreamweaver, Audacity, Dragon Naturally Speaking and others.

$$$ As much as it takes - within reason. Not enough to make a moon launch! Definitely under 5k. Hopefully under 3. Less than 2 would be MUCH better... but my dead W701 was just under 3k when I bought it used, already a few years old. I don't know where prices are these days.

I shoot at 60 fps, 1080p unless I'm shooting slow motion or 4k.

thanks,

Paz

[sidd finch]

Computer deaths are the constant reminder of how dependent we are on those wacky little machines. And it always happens at a very inconvenient time too.

I say your brand of machine on amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... enovo+w701


Sidd

[Peru]

It's me, Steve. _Paz_, Pazzaz, Pazpazzaz, Patrice. I couldn't remember my password. Can't find my avatar on this old machine. Maybe you'll recognize me from this one.
Paz

PM Ron. I'm sure he can get you straightened out.

[Chuck Engels]

I have purchased or been giving multiple Lenovo Thinkpads for work or personal use over the past 5 years, love them. Just found an awesome deal on eBay for a Lenovo Thinkpad W520 with tons of extras for $280. It could run most anything, lots of power. I'm sure you could find something similar and even newer for a little more $$. My daughter uses this for Photoshop and Blender works and it keeps up really well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad ... true&rt=nc

[momoffduty]

Sorry Patrice for your laptop demise. Tough having to move over to a new build and then transfer. What a head ache. When I had my new computer built 2 years ago, Chris gave me some great recommendations. I think my list included low, middle & high. I was able with his help to keep the price in the budget.

[sidd finch]

And as long as your hard drive did not die you could remove the hard drive put it in a case and use it as an external drive to get your files back.

Sidd

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

...as long as your hard drive did not die... get your files back.

As Sidd says, if the HDD is OK nothing will likely be lost.

I am just about to retire my trusty but ageing Q6600 (see specs in my sig) and do a 'heart transplant' into the Antec case. New i7 6700k CPU, new mobo, new 16GB DDR4 RAM.

Everything else will stay the same so all files on the HDDs will be available once the 'surgery' takes place. The old CPU/mobo/RAM are going to a new home - a friend of mine who is still using a Pentium P4 machine.

Should be interesting to find out how much faster renders will become.

[Steve Grisetti]

Meantime, I do recommend focusing on the processor. For best performance with those high end programs, I'd get one that rates at least 8000-10000 on this benchmark chart.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

As you can see, some processors on this chart rate as high as 250000! But those can be very expensive, and they will devalue very quickly. Right now the sweet spot for bang for the buck is a rating of about 10,000.

With professional programs you'll also benefit from a good graphics card. And you'll get a lot of argument there re AMD vs nVidia. But I'll leave the experts to make a recommendation there.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

...I'd get one that rates at least 8000-10000 on this benchmark chart.

Not quite sure what those numbers mean in 'real world' scenarios when comparing chips to each other but my venerable Q6600 rates at 2,989 with the i7 6700k at 10,994 which is 3.67 times greater.

[sidd finch]

I always thought one simple way to see what kind of performance is to compare the voltage to the chip. The higher the voltage the more robust the chip is.

Sidd

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Last comment. I will carry out a render test using the Q6600 before the transplant then repeat the same render with the 6700k and post the timings in a new thread.

Sorry Paz, thread hihack is now over!!!

[Pazzaz]

Sidd,

Yep, that's my laptop. That seller really thinks a lot of it, doesn't he? Almost 2K - with no spare parts available???? Afraid I'll have to pass.

Nope, never a convenient time. But since I've been having to turn my machine off to let it cool down every once in a while (the fans are running) just from previewing video I do think it is time to upgrade.

=================
Peru,

re: password - I've tested my C drive in a docking station. It is fine but XP is the operating system on this machine and when I connect to the internet it is in XP fashion. If there is a way I can dig into the Win 7 OS on the drive to find my pw - I don't know how. Once I'm all set up with a new computer it will be there. No need to bother Ron. I'll just be Pazzaz for now. Thanks for the suggestion though!

=====================
Chuck,

Thanks for the link! Looks like that one is sold already - and I just cannot go smaller on the screen size than the 17" I've been using. It wasn't really large enough to see all of Premiere Pro and After Effects' screens clearly - for me anyway.

I Know what you mean. While they are not stylish, I have dearly loved my two Thank Pads. If Lenovo was still making the 17" with Wacom insert, I'd buy it again.

==================

Mom,

Thanks for the commiseration. I'm getting myself into a steeled mental state to be ready!!!
I haven't looked, but saw a headline that indicated you have another girl in the family. CONGRATS!

=================

Again, my hard drives are fine...

==================

John,

Sounds like an excellent move! I've been reading and reading and reading and keep coming across the i7 6700K as perhaps the fastest chip at a reasonable price right now. Looks like you're spot on.

I'd love to hear the difference after your upgrade. What motherboard are you going with? Feel free to continue in this thread if you like - or begin another - I'm not particularly concerned about highjacking. In fact, what I like to call 'thread drift' can often lead to other interesting perspectives. At any rate, I won't be offended either way.

==========================

Steve,

Ah! Is processor the first step? Good to know. Thanks for that link. I'll study it! Best bang for the buck is a great motto.

======================

As of now...

I found this link for barebones Clevo laptops:

http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php

The largest monitor they have is 17 inches and NONE of them have higher than 1080 resolution. I'm simply not going to be able to see that so I'm leaning towards a desktop.

I already have a 23" monitor over my watercolor desk. I'm not sure what the highest resolution is but I've tried it before as a second monitor for PrePro and it is too fuzzy. All I need it for while doing videos is to be sure that what I'm trying to demonstrate isn't being blocked by my hands and IS onscreen while I'm working. I'm going to need either a larger or higher resolution monitor. Maybe both.

I usually edit while in bed. I hate to have to give that up. I spend enough time (and back ache) in the chair. Mr. B and I have been discussing it. Amazon has a retractable VESA ceiling holder. If I can put a case under the bed and be able to pull down a large screen, maybe use a wireless keyboard... sounds good, doesn't it? Except for keyboard quality and having to go back to a separate Wacom it may be better than ever. At least that's the way I'm going to look at it!!!

I have some questions:

Last time I looked folks were talking about Sandy Bridge. Anyone know what processor, or socket, or whatever is good now?

In addition to looking for the chip I think I should be looking at motherboards and connections. Apparently USB 3.1 is 10 times faster than USB3. My hard drives are SATA 6 but are now limited to SATA 3. I'd rather have a motherboard with SATA 6 and USB 3.1 and it MUST have HDMI connections for the monitor and connecting cameras. If I should find a motherboard that doesn't have one of these things are PCI slots the way to add them? (It's been y e a r s since I've put a system together.)

Oh, and about cores. The i7 6700K has 4 cores, two (virtual?) and two real ones. Maybe that's simulated. (senior moments come all too often these days.) Are more cores important when considering 4k video editing?

And how can some chips that are lower GHz s be faster than other chips with a higher GHz number?

Sorry to be so long. Thanks to everyone who has gotten this far!

hugs,

Paz

[Bob]

Oh, and about cores. The i7 6700K has 4 cores, two (virtual?) and two real ones. Maybe that's simulated. (senior moments come all too often these days.) Are more cores important when considering 4k video editing?

And how can some chips that are lower GHz s be faster than other chips with a higher GHz number?

The i7 6700K has four real cores and supports hyper-threading. With hyper-threading, each real core appears to the OS as two virtual cores. Each pair of virtual cores shares the resources of one physical core. Each virtual core can support one process thread. So, the i7 6700k appears like it has eight virtual cores and can support 8 process threads. Because the resources are shared, you don't have the throughput of 8 actual cores, but it does improve the ability of the processor to handle multiple parallel processes. If one of the virtual cores is waiting on something, the other of the pair can take advantage of that and process it's instructions.

The clock frequency is no longer a measure of the speed of a processor. In the old days, you could only execute one instruction at a time. The faster the clock, the faster the cpu could execute the instruction. in a modern cpu, that's no longer the case. Because of the way the cpu architecture has changed, there is a lot of parallelism built into the chip and more than one thing can occur with each clock cycle. You can actually execute more than one instruction at a time. Some calculations need to wait for the results of another calculation, but even there, there are techniques for predicting the outcome and allowing the other calculation to proceed. If the prediction is correct, you gain speed, if not, you do the calculation using the correct value -- you haven't lost anything appreciable.

Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro and After Effects all can take advantage of multiple cores to improve performance. The number of actual cores is the determining factor.