I don't think you really understand that the GTX 680MX doesn't have to be NVIDIA's best CUDA processing GPU in order to work just fine for a wide variety of professional uses. What you're talking about is the really high end walk-away-from-your-computer types of functions like rendering, not edit on the fly types of functions where the processing function begins/ends in a matter of seconds. Plus, the trend seems to be going to OpenCL standards for GPU acceleration, rather than NVIDIA's proprietary CUDA. Adobe already switched CS to OpenCL for version 6. Core i7 quad, 16GB RAM, 3 TB Fusion Drive, 2GB GTX 680MX ... it's obviously not "underpowered" for a wide variety of creative uses, and the resale value negates the up-front price differences vs. a self-built PC.
Just an FYI on this: not to continue the argument because I've backed up my initial statement enough. But they still support both. OpenCL doesn't currently accelerate as many functions as CUDA does because they weren't able to surpass CPU performance with OpenCL for these functions currently. Basically, since OpenCL is not being pushed by a big company like the proprietary CUDA is its support is fairly lacklustre right now. This is also why it didn't make it into CS5 in time; it wasn't ready because of no big backing behind it, or at least the backing that was there wasn't eager enough to invest into making it relevant now. I don't like proprietary standards myself and hope that OpenCL can catch up soon. I own a 7950 at home which should be a fantastic card for OpenCL work given the low cost but it's not because OpenCL is not there... yet. This is why I said the AMD 5xxx series available with MacPro's are next to useless for professionals, not just because they're dated and not a compute orientated architecture, but because OpenCL support is still woeful. I hope things change soon, but basically back to the argument for one last time, it is a good thing Apple went back to NV for the 2012 iMacs. I hope they have fewer issues with nvidia than last time.
I think she's going to hold off until the Haswell based notebooks are released later this year. She seems to like the look of the Samsungs. We bought an SSD for her beat up Vaio to speed it up a bit until she gets a new computer.
Yeah I thought that comment was a little out of bounds but... I knew Monkey would just be Monkey about it It would disappear some day xD
My Laptop has been in a shop since Saturday as it buggered up with the constant Q button again but this time it did not go away. The guy in there said it could be the keyboard or water damage on the keyboard. Luckily today he rang and said the keyboard needs replacing. Only costing me £49.99 for the man hours, keyboard and repair, so happy it was only that.
If it was the motherboard it would be double that so I dont care. It will be back to how it was before thy twat spilt drink On it.
Laptop keyboards go for around $5-10 from parts warehouses on ebay. It's usually a matter of prying up a piece of plastic and unscrewing two screws, and only takes a minute or two to replace. You're getting buttraped both in terms of the price and how long it's taking this jackass to do the repair. I used to fix laptops for people back in college, and I didn't even charge that much for labor when I did CPU upgrades and had to take the whole laptop apart. Why are you so terrified of fixing something yourself?
I'm not going to talk about other brands... but if you have DELL change the keyboard yourself. It's real easy and takes < 5 minutes. Probably a Youtube video about it by now. I would get more joy lighting $80 on fire and watching it burn than giving it to someone ripping me off.
The cinavia DRM bullshit on the PS3 and current bluray players has pissed me off to the point where I've decided to just build a full blown HTPC for watching pirated content. I might even sell my PS3s because cinavia has made them almost completely useless to me. I think I'm going to do an AMD APU setup. I was very impressed with the performance for the price when I built a Llano APU system for my mother in law (something like 7.2 WEI for the CPU, and 6.5 for the GPU). It was also very cool and quiet. I couldn't even tell it was running when it was on. Here's what I'm thinking: A6-3650 Quad Core 8GB DDR3 ASUS F1A75-M PRO R2.0 Reuse Antec P180, Antec 400W PSU, and 320GB WD 7200RPM I figure with combo deals I could pull this off for around $200. I looked at the second gen APUs but they either look underpowered or overpriced. You have to spend a lot more to get a quad core and I'd like to keep this cheap. I also looked at i3s, but they're much more expensive, and the intel integrated video is terrible. The other thing I was looking at was the WD Live. But the interface was sluggish and barely responsive when I tried it. I'm also worried that WD could pull a Sony and slip DRM into a firmware update. With the HTPC at least I'm not at the mercy of some company deciding what I can and can't watch. And let's be honest here. Piracy is the future. Nobody pays to watch movies at home these days except for old people. So I want a good piracy setup.