So looks like I need a new PC to edit my AVCHD
On a budget of about £400 I can get a dual core 2.66 ghz intel pc
but heres what I don't get . for a bit more I can get a quad core but it'll be 2.33 ghz which is actually slower. ? Does that mean I'll actually be better of getting the dual core?
If its relevant I'll be using vegas or the sony software to edit.
I'm looking tio make a 1/2 hour film not a feature film so I realise it'sa going to be a compromised system that will have weak points
Anyone? thanks
Alex

alexleominster
IMHO - Quad core all the way all the time.

The Quad core's have something called hyperthreding technology, this basically means that when you send a request to the CPU it splits it up into 4 and can get the job done 1/4 of the time faster than a single core....

The Ghz means very little in Quad core as a 2.3 Ghz Quad will be able to handle more information than a 2.4 Ghz Dual core. It might not look faster but the time it takes to do something will be shorter...

Therefore; A Quad core will do something quicker than a Dual core, even though its at a slower clock speed (Ghz) it will manage to do the computations quicker.

Now one thing i feel you may be missing is the GPU (Graphics Card) is just as important as the CPU. A good Graphics Card with 512Meg or more that is SLI or NOT AGP, will also help with the computations of the computer, this is because as soon as you ask for something to be done on the computer it has to show that its doing something - Therefore the more Meg on the Graphics card the quicker it can show what its doing.

The second thing is system memory - For AVCHD or any HD footage i would recommend at least 2Gig of system ram minimum.

Put this all together and you have -:

You ask the computer to import HD footage from a camera, it connects, reads, converts, writes, shows this on the screen and "Buffers" in its memery the next action. All this in a split second, the less cores on the CPU you have and the less memeroy on the system and graphics card the slower this will happen, allbeit in seconds.

Bottom line, go for the Quad if you can, but if this system you are getting has a rubbish graphics card then going for the dual core getting a good graphics card. Never forget to get as much "Matched" memory as you can.

"Matched" memory is memory that is the same clock / bus speed and Htz which work similar to a dual core splitting up the requests between them and getting things done waster.

Hope this helps.


Get the Dual Core with a good Graphics Card (512meg or more) and you wont go wrong.

Mitch

EDIT:

"Matched" memory is memory that is the same clock / bus speed and Htz which work similar to a dual core splitting up the requests between them and getting things done waster. I have just re-read my post and i didnt mean to write "waster" lol, i cant stop sniggering - - - Obvously i meant faster.

lol.

Mitch,
Thanks mate for taking the time to reply so fully...I appreciate it. That was just the kind of information I was after so I will print it out , stick it in my pocket and have a look through the usual for what I can find...
I'm sure others will find that explanation useful too.
Cheers
Alex

I've probably come to this thread a bit late but nevertheless I'd like to clear up a few inaccuracies in MitchUKs post. (Don't worry - the conclusion is sound - but the "facts" are not.

1. A Quad Core will not process info at 4 times the speed of a single. IF you have four identical processes which can be run independently (ie one doesn't need to finish before another) AND the OS is multiprocessor capable AND the software is written to allow multicore processing then theoretically you will get 4x but the real world isn't like that (and can't be because there will always be dependencies). So don't expect anything like 4x the speed - a better speed, yes, but nothing like 4x.

2. SLI is irrelevant. SLI is an interface that lets two graphics cards work together. What's more it's a brand name rather than a standard.

3. Most software does its computation using the CPU rather than the graphics processor so the "power" of the graphics card is irrelevant (unlike in games where much 3D processing is delegated to te graphics card). A decent amount of RAM though may make your preview output smoother. A basic graphics card with 256MB RAM will be more than capable.

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Tim

Tim,

While i respect you for being on the forum more than me, i have to strongly disagree whith what you have said - I didnt say it would do it 4 x faster.

I said "this basically means that when you send a request to the CPU it splits it up into 4 and can get the job done 1/4 of the time faster than a single core...."

You are correct that SLI is a brand, i didnt say it was a standard. Mearly pointing out that having two GPU's that are SLI interfaced and that are NON AGP (Therefore PCIe) will work a lot faster.
But you say "Most software does its computation using the CPU rather than the graphics processor so the "power" of the graphics card is irrelevant" i feel is wrong.

Try this, remove your PCIe graphics card and pop one in that is 128meg £20 graphics card, lets see if it shows and plays back the rendered HD footage just as good as 2 x PCIe graphics cards in SLI with 512meg or more on each, that are hyperthreaded and clocked. I never once said that the power of the GPU was the thing to go for the most, but to show the rendered footage on an external TV so you have a good representation of what you will actually see, you will need something that has a bit of power with either DVI out or S Vid out.

You also said - "A basic graphics card with 256MB RAM will be more than capable" Funny, you havent mentioned DVI out, S Vid out and the like's.
If this chap goes out and buys a cheap £20 graphics card with 256 meg on, he may not even know that he needs DVI out for a good monitor, or that S Vid out is a must if you want to pop the image onto a TV.....

Yes a 256meg Graphics card will do, but i was letting him know that the graphics card will need to be a little better, simply because getting the rendered HD footage onto an external TV can not be done unless you have a card with DVI out or S Vid out. I didnt mention them, because a good card with 512 or more on it should have them on.

Sorry Tim but you made me out to be wrong on all accounts, thats just not correct.


Snippits from a small problems page on CPU's.

The amount of performance gained by the use of a multicore processor depends on the problem being solved and the algorithms used, as well as their implementation in software (Amdahl's law). For so-called "embarrassingly parallel" problems, a dual-core processor with two cores at 2GHz may perform very nearly as fast as a single core of 4GHz. Other problems though may not yield so much speedup. This all assumes however that the software has been designed to take advantage of available parallelism. If it hasn't, there will not be any speedup at all. However, the processor will multitask better since it can run two programs at once, one on each core.


With the above in mind, running windows and other essential tasks will take up a small amount of power from the CPU, if you have a quad core, then this can be split into 4 and the larger requests can be done quicker, while the basic task of running windows can be dealt with by one of the other cores...



Have a look at the attached gif, it will explain a lot.


Alienware: Understanding Processor Performance! for more information.

Mitch

Attached Images

quad vs dual.gif (6.6 KB, 5 views)

quarter of the time is the same as 4 times faster, it'sd comon sence.

Tim is right in say that any graphics card will do for video editing. I bought a graphics card the otherweek for £25 and it has DVI and HDMI. s-video is only SD.

There is no real world gain in videoediting by having a SLI or SrossFire setup. If you need more that 2 monitors then a dual graphics card will work but with sli you are limited with one monitor, i'm not sure about crossfire. Another thing is that for SLI you need an nVidia chipset which are not very effecien comapired to Intels equivelent chipsets.

Tim is also right about because there are 4 times as many processors, it doen't mean that ou will get four times the speed because there are many factors which need to be included such as FSB, Mulitplier, HDD interfaces, Ram Speed, Timings, frequencys etc. The way you worded your post suggests it will be 4 times faster.

All tim is trying to do is clear things up.

As Smifis has said, that was not my intention at all, Mitch.

Though now you mention it, I do believe you are wrong on counts 2 and 3. And to the uninitiated, your point about quad cores could be misleading.

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Tim

Tim is correct esspically with Vegas, the video card is irrelevant it is just to see the image on the screen and does not talk to he software in any speed related performance. This is from experience.

There is a standard out there for video cards, that some video software will use during render and use the graphics card GPU to speed up rendering.

Only multiple monitors warrant a better card.

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