How much CPU / GPU to effortlessly edit native AVCHD?

[Jacob Kerns]

[Kevin Patrick] “But you will get more for your money on an i7 upgrade over an i5”

The difference between a i5 and i7 sandy bridge is a moot point. I built a i5 sandy bridge to play with PPro and its not that much slower than the i7 in fact it should of been called an i7 because the difference is 10%. I can edit native 1080p AVCHD footage and its smooth as butter with effects. Difference in speed between my Macpro and this is like night and day. Same encoding project took 6hrs on the Mac and 1.5hrs on the i5. My brothers i7 was only 5-10mins faster.

My i5 scored a 9094 and only cost me $175 at Microcenter. Whole computer was less than a grand.

https://ark.intel.com/products/47918/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3670-(12M-Cache-3_20-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI)

NIADA
Technical Director

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

That was a nice reply, this is what I SUSPECT but haven’t heard anyone say. Most people are keen to rather go too high than risking not getting satisfied but macs are very expensive and a balance needs to be made between performance vs cost.

[Walter Soyka]

[Kristian Tigersjäl] “Most people are keen to rather go too high than risking not getting satisfied but macs are very expensive and a balance needs to be made between performance vs cost.”

Here’s a benchmark comparing the iMac i5 and iMac i7. You can see the performance difference and decide for yourself if it’s worth it:

https://www.barefeats.com/imac11f.html

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Walter Soyka] “Here’s a benchmark comparing the iMac i5 and iMac i7. You can see the performance difference and decide for yourself if it’s worth it:”

I agree.

Also that 5-10 minutes faster will add up during the day, but maybe that’s just me. If you don’t need the extra time, then save some money. Generally, the faster machine that you buy, the longer it will stay useful. You might have a different set if requirements, so get the slower one?

[Jacob Kerns]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Also that 5-10 minutes faster will add up during the day, but maybe that’s just me. If you don’t need the extra time, then save some money.”

Well I could overclock my i5 to 4.7mhz which makes up that 5-10min difference. I have it set to auto speedstep which bumps it up to under load to 4.5Mhz and that’s stable and only a 2min difference. Hmm 1k or $200 bucks for roughly the same speed? For 1k you could max out ram, good video card or even to good 2 large format monitors.

NIADA
Technical Director

[Walter Soyka]

[Jacob Kerns] “Well I could overclock my i5 to 4.7mhz which makes up that 5-10min difference. I have it set to auto speedstep which bumps it up to under load to 4.5Mhz and that’s stable and only a 2min difference. Hmm 1k or $200 bucks for roughly the same speed? For 1k you could max out ram, good video card or even to good 2 large format monitors.”

I don’t know that this is a viable option for someone looking to purchase an iMac to run FCPX.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

It’s not afaik possible to overclock a mac cpu. Read that as “a cpu in mac” 😉

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jacob Kerns] “Well I could overclock my i5 to 4.7mhz which makes up that 5-10min difference. I have it set to auto speedstep which bumps it up to under load to 4.5Mhz and that’s stable and only a 2min difference. Hmm 1k or $200 bucks for roughly the same speed? For 1k you could max out ram, good video card or even to good 2 large format monitors.”

Ok. So don’t buy an iMac?

[Jacob Kerns]

[Jeremy Garchow] “Ok. So don’t buy an iMac?”

An iMac would be fine if your not doing heavy editing. I think their great for small projects but I think without the option to swap video cards or expansion its a turn off for graphics/video work. Specially since a lot of software is starting to use cuda more. Thunder bolt might change that.

[Kristian Tigersjäl] “It’s not afaik possible to overclock a mac cpu. Read that as “a cpu in mac” ;)”

No its not. it was in the response to this post

[Kevin Patrick] “But you will get more for your money on an i7 upgrade over an i5, as opposed to getting an SSD drive. “

So The point was the i5 Sandy Bridge isn’t that much slower than the i7 or the MacPro well at least on the PC side and especially with the auto overclock that comes with most ASUS/Gigabyte/MSI boards.

I built an i5 PC to play with PPro and its faster than my MacPro 5.1. Even in AE. What angers me is how much I paid for the Macpro and it gets out performed by a iMac or i5/i7 PC.

NIADA
Technical Director

[Kristian Tigersjäl]

That is the whole point here, I am getting a mac, and there is no choice on this in the matter. I don’t think you can overclock a mac pro either, though I haven’t verfied this assumption.