If you have been browsing the tech channels on YouTube lately, there are good chances you’ve caught the buzz about Nvidia and their RTX Studio laptops. Various YouTubers are getting their opinions about these new laptops out as Nvidia is sending sample units around.
Armando Ferreira is one of those lucky guys, and in the video below, he’ll be comparing the brand new RTX laptop by Gigabyte with one of the top laptops for content creators the latest 2019 MacBook Pro. Let’s see how both rivals will tackle ingesting and editing some 8K RED footage in real-time.
First things first. In case you are not familiar with the RTX brand and may be wondering what exactly it is, let’s do a quick recap. Nvidia has been partnering with computer manufacturers to build top-notch laptops when it comes to built quality and performance and developed a specific set of drivers for this content-creation approved laptops.
These mobile workstations are aimed directly at those who will take advantage of the raw computing power in a variety of system-intensive tasks such as 3D renders, VFX, video editing, compositing, and whatnot.
The laptop that was sent to Armando is made by Gigabyte, it’s a 15-inch model and sports an i9 processor coupled with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of solid-state storage through a blazing fast M2 slot. There’s no word on what RTX card is in the sample machine, but Gigabyte offers two configurations, either an RTX 2070 or 2080, both with 8GB of VRAM. It’s worth noting that the laptop supports up to 64GB of RAM, in case you think of upgrading it.
Now back to the tests. Firing up REDCine-X and opening up those 8K 5:1 RED Raw files gives us immediately the magnitude of the difference in these two laptops. The RTX plays the footage at full resolution keeping a steady frame rate between 23-24fps. The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, needs to lower down to 1/8 of the resolution to get a similar performance. At full resolution, we can’t get past 3-4fps.
Switching to Premiere Pro CC and importing the same files, the RTX responds pretty well. There are a few and minor stutters, but the overall performance (mind you, we’re talking full 8K) is more than adequate. Going back to the Mac, the performance is slightly less optimal with much more lag in the playback.
When it comes to testing the pre-render time alongside the 8K to 4K export time, there’s a clear winner. The 15″ RTX Studio laptop sits on top finishing the export over a minute earlier, and that’s on a two and a half minutes clip.
Unfortunately for Apple, this was not meant to be an OSX vs Windows comparison. The ability to squeeze all the juice out of those RTX cards is what really makes the difference, but at the moment no Nvidia card is officially supported on macOS, nor internal or through eGPU.
Needless to say that this level of advantage in choosing a Windows machine certified as an RTX laptop is going to make more than a few content creators reconsider their upgrade path in the near future.
[source: Armando Ferreira]
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