• VEGAS Pro

  Choosing the right system for HD video editing

  Posted by Jamie Carsten on February 23, 2014 at 11:05 am

  Hey everyone,

  I’ve been editing on a 15Z Dell laptop the past two years. It’s an I7-3517U @ 1.90Gh and 8GB of Ram. It was clear pretty early on it was incapable of HD video editing (using Sony Vegas Pro 12) with the main problem being stuttering, skipping during playback in the timeline – particularly when I added transitions and effects. Thus, I’ve been saving a bit each month for over a year to buy a system that will allow me edit HD in all its glory and I really want to make sure I buy the right system this time. The three (desktop computers this time) I am looking at are below. I was hoping you’d be able to let me know which of these are capable of HD video editing (if any) and any warning signs with any of them or questions I should be asking the retailer. I don’t really understand any of the specs beyond the processor, GHz, cores and RAM.

  Thanks so much!

  Jamie

  Computer 1 – https://www.dell.com/au/p/xps-8700/pd?oc=w2111g02au&model_id=xps-8700

  Processor: 4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-4770 processor (8M Cache, up to 3.9 GHz)
  Memory: 12GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz – 4 DIMMs
  Hard Drive: 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive 6.0 Gb/s
  Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 645 1.0GB GDDR5
  Ports: Support for 4 HDD bays: including (3) 3.5” HDDs
  –Capable of 1 SSD and 3 HDD configuration

  Computer 2 – https://www.harveynorman.com.au/hp-pavilion-500-007a-desktop.html

  Processor: AMD Quad-Core A10-6700 APU (3.7 GHz, 4 MB cache)
  Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (2x8GB) 4 DIMM memory slots
  Hard drive: 3 TB 7200 rpm SATA
  Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 8570 (2 GB DDR3 dedicated)
  ABLE TO ADD SSD?

  Computer 3 – https://www.computeralliance.com.au/alliance-gen4-i7-ultimate-desktop

  Processor: Intel S1150 Core i7 4770 3.40GHz Quad Core CPU
  Memory: 16GB Memory DDR3
  Hard Drive: 2TB WD 3.5″ Caviar Green SATA 6Gb/s HDD PN WD20EZRX
  Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX650 1GB Gigabyte PCIe Video Card

  Dawn Raine replied 12 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  John Rofrano

  March 3, 2014 at 12:21 am

  From what I can see, Computer 3 is the best buy. Computer 2 is ruled out because AMD processors perform much slower than Intel so I wouldn’t even consider one. Computer 1 only has a 450W power supply. In true Dell fashion, it has enough power for the parts they sell you but isn’t really prepared to handle the extra hard drives you’re going to want to add to it. Computer 3 has a 700W power supply, more memory than the Dell (16GB) and a better graphics card (GTX650) than the Dell. All around, Computer 3 is the best of the bunch. (besides, Dell uses bottom of the line parts so I would never recommend then anyway)

  Maybe someone who understands the AMD line can comment on Computer 2 but I just steer clear of AMD CPU’s.

  ~jr

  http://www.johnrofrano.com
  http://www.vasst.com
• 

  Jamie Carsten

  March 3, 2014 at 11:57 am

  Thanks John.
• 

  John Rofrano

  March 3, 2014 at 4:18 pm

  You’re welcome. I would wait and see what others say before you buy but that’s what I would pick given those choices.

  Also check out what others are saying about Computer Alliance. I prefer to buy from small boutique shops like this because they tend to use industry standard off-the-shelf parts so it’s really easy to upgrade them making them a better deal than Dell or HP with their proprietary cases and connectors.

  ~jr

  http://www.johnrofrano.com
  http://www.vasst.com
• 

  Dawn Raine

  March 17, 2014 at 2:01 pm

  Thank you for the thread. I am interested in this too.
  My computer is old.

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