Quote I just bought an Asus Predator Helios 300 15.6 laptop(G3-571-77QK). Basic specs are i7-7700HQ, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, GTX1060-6GB. I've added a 2TB FireCuda SSHD for storage. OS is Win10 Home.

PD16 is installed on my SSD. Media files are on the SSHD.

Are there any settings I can change to improve performance? Any reasonable hardware improvements I can make?
"
For instance, while viewing previews I will see the timeline stall when it gets to a transition between clips. It seems I'm barely taking advantage of the available processing power, and yet it stalls for a very brief second while it "thinks".

Rendering times are excellent, at about 3X content length at 4K.

Maybe this will help you out

PowerDirector Tutorials Team

Quote I just bought an Asus Predator Helios 300 15.6 laptop(G3-571-77QK). Basic specs are i7-7700HQ, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, GTX1060-6GB. I've added a 2TB FireCuda SSHD for storage. OS is Win10 Home.

PD16 is installed on my SSD. Media files are on the SSHD.

Are there any settings I can change to improve performance? Any reasonable hardware improvements I can make?
"
For instance, while viewing previews I will see the timeline stall when it gets to a transition between clips. It seems I'm barely taking advantage of the available processing power, and yet it stalls for a very brief second while it "thinks".

Rendering times are excellent, at about 3X content length at 4K.

I don't recommend using laptops for video processing at all. Laptops, despite how "powerful" they may be advertized, are built with limited "mobile" processors specifically for preserving battery life. There are no exceptions because no laptop sells with a reputation for having short battery life.

Using a laptop, if you are producing 1080 video, you can get away with it if it's 30fps, but it's going to be sluggish, even with shadow files enabled. If you're processing 1080 at 60fps, your going to sit there listening to that cooling fan scream all night, but the work will eventually get done. If procesisng 4K video, your cooling fan will screem all night and the progress indicator will rarely move at all, and that's using a laptop with 8 cores. People truly over-estimate the capabilitires of laptops and usually get very surrised to find out how badly they choke on video processing, even if they are listed as "gaming" laptops.

I recommend avoiding laptops for doing video altogether and using a real PC with a real CPU that was built for serious processing. Full PC's allow for great features like CPU overclocking, serious cooling options, ultra-fast RAM upgrades (as much as you want) and super hot hard drives of insane capacity. The sky's the limit with a real PC. Laptops are extremely limited, built for battery efficiency, and have virtually no upgrade options.

Quote I don't recommend using laptops for video processing at all. Laptops, despite how "powerful" they may be advertized, are built with limited "mobile" processors specifically for preserving battery life.

Respectively disagree. Laptop reduce CPU speed ONLY when on battery power and can even reduce display brightness to conserve battery power.

However when plugged into AC, NONE of that applies. I have a Sager 17" notebook with similiar specs. You may need to adjust Windows 10 power settings. With all that said, Power Director has NEVER fully utilized any CPU or GPU on my desktop or laptop. Even though PD does indeed have fast rendering at Produce, it doesn't seem to utilize the CPU or GPU efficiently during editing on the timeline.

Just MY opinion, that it is a software issue.
My laptop out performs my 4700k desktop with GTX1060. Some that can be attributed to the faster SSD in the laptop (M2). I would no problem replacing my desktop with it. Most desktop motherboards DO have a limit on RAM.

Quote
Respectively disagree. Laptop reduce CPU speed ONLY when on battery power and can even reduce display brightness to conserve battery power.

However when plugged into AC, NONE of that applies. I have a Sager 17" notebook with similiar specs. You may need to adjust Windows 10 power settings. With all that said, Power Director has NEVER fully utilized any CPU or GPU on my desktop or laptop. Even though PD does indeed have fast rendering at Produce, it doesn't seem to utilize the CPU or GPU efficiently during editing on the timeline.

Just MY opinion, that it is a software issue.
My laptop out performs my 4700k desktop with GTX1060. Some that can be attributed to the faster SSD in the laptop (M2). I would no problem replacing my desktop with it. Most desktop motherboards DO have a limit on RAM.

The limitations for laptops are very real compared to workstations, and it's based on what they are actually built to handle. It goes way beyond Windows power settings. One system is built for configuration variety and flexibility, sustained heavy load processing at enterprise levels, and long-term durability. The other is fragile, built for battery life, and not designed for any heavy loads other than short bursts of video gaming.

The desktop limit on RAM is ALWAYS vastly higher than a laptop, and greater selection of RAM brands and speeds. I won't even get into hard drve selection, let alone number of combined drives for RAID performence and capacity available to the workstation. With a 1080ti, a typical desktop can render 4Kp60 at near real-time without breaking a sweat, and that's BEFORE adding a desktop-only CPU like an i9 7960X or a 1950X Threadripper just to show off. No laptop is going to get anywhere near that no matter how much money is dumped into it.

It reminds me of some humor I once heard spoken by a friend: "True, the Germans can engineer that electric pencil sharpener so tight that it will produce 500 horsepower - but only for half a second before it explodes."

For what it's worth, of course. :