Thread: Laptop opinions
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Old 05-30-2019, 07:27 PM   #21
Rednroll
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fred garvin View Post

Just ran good right out the box? No heat problems or weird throttling issues or Reaper issues? What kinds of projects and plugs and whatnot do you run? It sure would be nice to be able to run all my nice expensive software.

Hmmmmm... I can get a Dell with an 8550 that seems pretty similar to yours for $800. Waiting is good advice... sniping for the best deal is good advice... but man I could just be done with a nice new laptop this weekend...
I'm currently haven't done any Reaper projects with this laptop. I've been working on some Youtube video projects which consists of 4 tracks of 1080p@60 Hz video tracks and then 4-12 tracks of audio. I shoot video with 1-4 cams for multi angle views, cut and splice them together, transitions, some titling. Then add voice, music and Sound FXs. VO and video post type of stuff. I'm doing that in Vegas Pro 16. I'm using Waves and Valhalla plugins, basic EQ, compressor, and Reverb type of plugs for mixing purposes. Everything has been running great but I'm not working on any massive projects and really haven't tried pushing the system to its limits to see what it can do.

When I was shopping for the best value to performance CPU's in my budget range it boiled down to the Intel i7-7700HQ vs the i7-8550. I could have gone either way, they both seem to have similar performance. No problems for the 8550 so far and there seems to be a lot of value priced laptops now coming out over this past year with that CPU that weren't so widely available when I bought mine.

See here 7700HQ vs 8550U:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...11019vsm320742

I put a slight preference towards the 8550 due to it being a Gen 8 CPU and would be better for my laptop battery life if I was doing any remote recording since it uses Intel's latest technology of ramping up the CPU speed as it was needed. As well as it should run cooler than the 7700HQ. Plus, I take the laptop off of my docking station from its DAW use and then use it for other tasks,entertainment around the house.

I don't have a strong preference towards AMD or Intel, I've owned both over the years but tend to now lean more towards Intel since they're more widely supported in regards to software and OS. I've read many good things about the AMD Ryzen CPUs.

I've definitely done some tweaks and fine tuning. I changed power plans, hardware drivers, totally wiped it clean and installed Win10 Pro as well as added the OS SSD which had the biggest impact towards performance upgrade from out of the box. Dell now ships the Inspiron 7570 with an SSD option which wasn't available when I bought mine. Overall, I feel the Dell Inspiron 7000 series have a nice build quality and slim design to them for this price range of laptop. It reminds me of a MacBook Pro but at a much nicer price point.
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