Hi. I am buying a new laptop and I am wondering if is is ok for VCV. I am buying a Huawei MateBook 14 , with a Ryzen AMD 5 4600 with graphic adapter AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 / 16 GB RAM DDR4 with a 2160 x 1440, 185 PPI.
This is a fairly good CPU but it lacks a dedicated graphic card and I am wondering if I should invest a bit more and buy one with a dedicated graphic card. I ask this because in the System requirement I see this: “Graphics: Dedicated graphics card from ~2013 or later with the latest driver software update”.
The graphic adapter will count as an “integrated graphics card” - and is therefor not recommended for VCV. I don’t have any experience with using it, but here is another point to consider:
If you ever plan to use an external display for stationary use, you will need the matedock to connect it, and the maximum resolution will be 3840x2160@30Hz. Since 4K-Displays are fairly common now, you may want to consider, that 30Hz with 4K is noticably worse than the native 60Hz or above which is the standard for displays nowadays. A dedicated graphics card like the 1650 for example will provide native 4k@60Hz at the built in HDMI-Port and in addition to that also more resolution options (like 3440x1440 ultrawide 21:9).
Hi. Thanks a lot for all the info. I am not sure if I will buy a monitor soon, I am moving a lot lately, but it is something I am considering to do. What you said make sense. Still I am not sure if with a fairly good 2020 CPU + a good amount of RAM you need an external GC to produce music. I am a developer and my previous experience with making music was with csound, so I do not not much about vcv.
Does anyone in this community has experience using vcv on laptop?
Yes, I got a Dell G7 gaming laptop just over a year ago and that runs some beefy patches. You don’t need an amazing graphics card, but any reasonable gaming laptop, even an entry level one will run VCV quite well.
Also, you don’t need a lot of RAM for VCV unless you want to run sampling plugins like Spitfire Labs or something. Mine had 8Gb when I got it, and that was fine (I upgraded to 16 for other stuff). Go for the fastest CPU and any dedicated GPU, basically.
Realtime processes like audio require a high performance and stable environment. Make sure you invest in a workstation that can run heavy loads for extended periodes while running a patch. Heat generation is a major issue in a laptop. Any extra external cooling helps. CPU, GPU and disk (go for SSD) all generate heat. Cheaper/lesser quality components may fail sooner. Make sure your GPU can help your CPU e.g. running parallel processes. Overclocking is definitely not a good Idea if the rest of your internal components can’t handle this. Make sure your chipset is well supported.
Generally gaming laptops and true workstations are the better choices. Quality generally comes at a higher price.
ah… so I really do need a dedicated gpu. I did not expected that, I can’t see vcv more demanding than say Fortnite, so at the beginning I guessed I could run VCV on a 2020 laptop with no dedicated GPU that can run Fortnite smoothly. Apparently not . Thanks all
It’s not about the GUi/resolution/screen refresh. It is about “outsourcing”.
Depending on the way the developer uses the resources…GPU can do many simple calculations in parallel. He could “outsource” something like unison. So in the mean time your CPU can do other things.
Also…make sure you CPU is the newest and fastest you can afford. You can upgrade stuff like disks/SSD and memory. But most often not your CPU.
Newer CPU’s might support more/faster instructions and such. Cheaper/older might not support the latest technology. So even if the software supports it now or in new and improved versions, you won’t benefit.
So…it’s not all about the Clock frequency (generally Ghz). Also how much it can achieve in one clocktick.
. Thanks all