Thread: Finally getting into video editing.... Need your specs advice!

Long-time reader of the forum and finally getting a machine of my own, I was hoping someone could provide feedback for these desktop specs.

Would it be worth upgrading the video card? I'm still a newbie so I don't need anything special at the moment but was wondering if you guys thought it would be worth it to upgrade the machine and to which specs?

Thanks!!


Dell XPS 8300

Processor	Intel® Core™ i7-2600 processor(8MB Cache, 3.4GHz)
Operating System	Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
Memory3	8GB4 DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
Hard Drive	1000GB3 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
Video Card	AMD Radeon™ HD 6450 1GB DDR3 -or- AMD Radeon HD 6670 1 GB DDR5 (add $80) 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GT545 (add $110) AMD Radeon HD 6770 (add $140)

i would go for the 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GT545 card.

...and a second hard drive, if both aren't an option the second hard drive would be more benificial.

David.

If no space for a second drive, then one in an external caddie via SATA

The key is to determine what you want to do with a system.

You could buy an editing system as your primary means of putting food on the table, Or just as a hobby on the side.

You don't need a "hefty" system, If it is purely as a hobby, Yes you could spend £3000 getting a lighting fast edit rig, But if your only editing every once in a while and it is not a means of income, You might want to consider how much performance I want for the price I am investing into the system.

I worked at a corporate conference as part of the larger production team, I took the footage in, Bit of colour correction, Chop up the cuts, Burnt DVDs with the conference seminars on, Editing system used?

An old Apple G5 that was way past it's prime, But it got the job done! And this was for a paid gig!

I'd think very carefully how much you want that extra power before you stump up the cash.

Yea this is more for a hobby, itd be nice to have a machine that in the event I got a little more into it could handle more advanced production.

I don't know much about video cards, I just want something that is a little above average quality.

Unless you spend serious money, Video cards won't do jack for your video editing.

Key items are:
CPU
HHDs
Memory

Everything else is just a bonus.

Just to say, Most of the edits I do I can do on a dual core processor based system, So for the simple learning of how things work and how to do it, I'd reccomend no higher than an I5 Processor with 8GB of ram and a half decent video card. Make sure to invest in storage though! 1TB just for movies at minimum.

Is the AMD Radeon HD 6770 (add $140) a 2gb card?

It's very expensive, so I would hope so.

Your spec seems good, but you don't have the chip number - you could be buying a high end office machine rather than a mid range pro machine - the processor number/type is important for that