Laptop - with SLI or not

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Hi all blenderartists,

I’ve been planning and saving up my money to buy a new laptop. My current one is a HP Pavilion dv9000 from 2006, and I think it’s time for me to upgrade.

I’m building around a Clevo/Sager P370EM, with an i7-3840QM processor, 16GB of RAM, but I’m having some trouble regarding the GPU.
From the information that I’ve gathered AMD cards do not work very well with Cycles, thus leaving me with the NVIDIA ones.
The P370EM has two slots for GPU but I haven’t decided what to install, so I have a couple of questions:
-is it worth installing two 680M, or is one more than enough?
-instead of the 680M, should I go for the 675M?
-is there any gain in Blender if I’m running SLI?

I’ll go to a store where they sell custom Clevo/Sager and ask them how much it costs to install a second card later on (hardware+labor), and have a look at the FHD LED Matte 72% High Color Gamut and see if it’s really worth the extra 110€.

For the rest of the laptop, I’ll go with a HDD, a SSD and Windows 8. Besides Blender, it will be running After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Cinema4D.

Thank you very much and bye bye.

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No replies? :frowning:

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I don’t work much with laptops (and have no experience with GPU rendering on them) but here is the best I can say:

If possible it is best to run multiple CUDA GPUs separately in the same system (non-SLI). I think SLI will work with Blender but I have read somewhere on these forums that it can cause complications somehow.

The 680M is pretty much as good as you can do for a laptop for GPU rendering - but it still isn’t nearly as good as the desktop version. Also, do keep in mind that it will put on a LOT of heat. Be sure to have good airflow around the laptop - preferably in a cooled room.