What you need to know
- At Computex 2019, NVIDIA launched its RTX Studio program for laptops.
- The RTX Studio badge indicates a laptop is designed to handle creative tasks like video and photo editing with speed and efficiency.
- More than a dozen RTX Studio laptops are currently expected to hit the market, all packing RTX graphics chips.
- New Quadro mobile graphics chips, including the top-end Quadro 5000, also made their debut today.
NVIDIA's RTX graphics chips aren't just for gamers; the company is setting creators in its sights as well. During its Computex 2019 presentation, NVIDIA took the wraps off of RTX Studio, a new badge for qualified laptops that signifies that they've been configured and tested to work quickly and efficiently with creative apps like Autodesk, DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom, and Unreal Engine.
In order to earn the RTX Studio badge, laptops have to meet certain hardware criteria. Those include GeForce RTX 2060 graphics and above (including the new Quadro RTX 5000 at the top end), up to 16GB or more of RAM, 512GB and higher SSD storage, and Intel Core i7 and higher processors.
The result is a laptop that is primed to get creative work done quickly. A large part of that effort leans on the work of NVIDIA's RTX graphics chips, which first debuted last year with a big focus on making games look as realistic as possible. For creative apps, NVIDIA is leaning on RTX heavily to accelerate ray tracing, AI tasks, video production, and more.
At the very top end will be NVIDIA Quadro RTX Studio laptops, which will pack one of several new Quadro RTX graphics chips NVIDIA is also launching today. The most capable of these new chips is the Quadro RTX 5000, which includes 16GB of VRAM and can handle 6K RED RAW files and large 3D models with ease. In a demo, NVIDIA also showed off the chip's multi-app capabilities, which, thanks to its healthy dose of RAM, allows creators to quickly switch between demanding rendering and editing apps with practically no lag time.
To support RTX Studio laptops, NVIDIA is also launching dedicated NVIDIA Studio Drivers. The company says the release cadence will be aligned with creative app releases, so don't expect new drivers to ship as rapidly as NVIDIA's Game Ready drivers. Ahead of new releases, NVIDIA promises it will test the drivers in several multi-app workflows, certifying that they'll work with supported applications.
At the start, NVIDIA says RTX Studio laptops will sport enhancements to AI and rendering with Autodesk Arnold, Clarisse, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Lightroom, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine, and Unity. Coming soon, NVIDIA plans to support Adobe Dimension CC, Daze3D, Octane Render, NVIDIA Iray, Redshift, Renderman, and V-Ray.
RTX Studio laptops, ranging from the low end to the high end, are expected from NVIDIA partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, Razer, HP, MSI, and Gigabyte. The first of these laptops, the Razer Blade Studio Edition, made already made its debut at Computex. Availability of RTX Studio-branded laptops is expected to start in June with prices starting at $1,600.
A great GPU for 1440p and even some 4K gaming
RTX 20-series NVIDIA GPUs are powerful gaming cards. The RTX 2060 is the successor to the excellent GTX 1070, offering ray tracing and DLSS, among other features.
Cheap PC accessories we love
Take a gander at these awesome PC accessories, all of which will enhance your Windows experience.
Anker 4 port USB 3.0 hub ($10 at Amazon)
Whether on a desktop or laptop PC, you always need more ports to connect things to. This hub gives you an additional four USB 3.0 Type A ports.
Ikea Fixa Cable Management System ($11 at Amazon)
This IKEA cable management kit is your ticket to a clean setup. It's simple and functional.
NZXT Puck ($20 at Amazon)
This clever little accessory has powerful magnets on the rear to make it stick to any of the metal panels on your PC case or anything else. It's great for hanging accessories like headsets.
