I've done quite a bit of research now on laptops suitable for VJing, and as a resolume use I now have a few questions.
1. Att the resolume crew:
You write on the support page
but then you claim:"we develop Resolume 3 on MacBooks Pro and they are excellent laptops for Resolume 3"
I've discovered that the omega drivers isn't made for macbooks, and I've read that macs come with one GPU driver that never get's an update and therefore performancewise doesn't get the most out of the GPU's. If that's true, then why recommend macbooks and hail the omega drivers - it's confusing! Ocf I realize that those recommendations are old since you in the same paragraph are recommending OSX over Vista - but does that recommendation extend to windows 7 ?"We use ATI/AMD GPUs mostly because with the excellent Omega drivers you get easy access to options like overscan and PAL/NTSC output resolutions on the TV-Out."
2. I've read several places that resolume (3) only adresses one core of the CPU, does that then mean that any single core processor with the same Mhz as a dual, quad, i5, i7 (i5 / i7 - does it really make a difference?) will perform equal to any new processor? If so, wouldn't it be more sensible to buy an older laptop with a dualcore and upgrade the harddrives to SSD and (if possible) the graphics, rather than spending precious ressources on a trillioncore laptop that performs just as good? What am I missing here, it can't be that simple can it? I'm especially considering this with regards to a macbook pro option, since older used dualcore macs are pretty cheap.
3. The MAC / PC dilemma
I've VJayed a couple of times using my iMac 21" with 8gb ram and 256gb graphics and a 3,06 intel dual core CPU, it was ok untill I started to get too creative with flash and more than 2 layers, then the framerate went under 20. - I really enjoy the capabilities of Quartz Composer, and I'm still learning alot about it. This is probably the main reason why I would stick to mac - other than that, the future of thunderbolt is promising (Lacie HD on the way + who knows?) and atm. macs are the only machines with this configuration (Sony VAIO is next). Also I've toyed around with madmapper, modul8 and VDMX demos, those too are nice pieces of software that I can imagine using in the future. But spec and pricewise, macs are awfully expensive and have limited upgrading options which are a nagging concern to the stingy utilitarian in me.
Say i get the newest macbook pro 17¨with the best specs available from mac: 2,4 i7, 8gb RAM, SSD harddrive and ofc the Radeon HD 6770M - What sort of limitations could i possibly experience? Where does such a config draw the line and start to crap out on me? example: 3D mapping setup with 3 layers of +/- 1920x1080 clips, quartzComposerfiles and audioreactive effects from line-in - would that be possible? What if I plugged in a triplehead with three projectors, what would happen then? I'd like to hear what your experiences are, with regards to how far you can take the hardware.
But yes...I know what you mean! I think it won't work that good because of the hardware architecture which is within an older laptop with a dualcore.
