Quad core processors…

[Vince Becquiot]

Yes, your system will get a big boost in rendering speeds, as well as overhaul performance.

But many other factors affect performance in addition to CPUs. Mainely drive speed (RAID is pretty much a must with HD).

And getting a cheap RAID card may actually be counter productive as it will rely on the CPU to run, something to keep in mind.

More CPUs means you’ll need more memory as well, especially if you also are a AE user. A minimum of 4 Gigs with CS3.

Vince

[Ann Bens]

Unfortunately Premiere does not use more than 2 gigs of Ram, the same goes for AE. Changing this to 3 gig is not worth it.
When running AE on a 64 bits OS then it will use all your RAM.

[Vince Becquiot]

Indeed, I would recommend a 64 bit operating system if you have new hardware.

Microsoft does state that for 32-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate, you will be able to see up to 4GB. I found that in the real world, it’s more like 3.2. Not an easy assessment given all possible hardware configurations.

One thing that I do know: You are not going to edit an HD project with 2 Gigs unless you like constant crashes. And an SD project will quicky reach that limit (don’t even think about opening a dynamic link project)

Cheers,

Vince

[Perry Cheng]

I edit HD footage from my Canon Hv20 (*.m2t) files without additional plugins (like Cineform) with my Quad CPU Q6600 Overclocked to 3.24GHz without any problem so far. It does render much faster than what I had previously (Dual Core AMD 3200+). BTW, I have 4G DDR2 (XP32 only recognize 3.2G of it), I did try using XP64 bits, but ran into some drivers not supported because I need to have additional Hard-drive. Also, many of my exisitng software can not be used, which I often count on (such as Partition Magic & Norton Ghost). Best wish.

Perry

[Rod In yakima]

Does Premiere Pro only use a maximum of 2GB RAM on the Mac Pro Quad Core?