What are my PC options?

[Kert]

Get a QUAD core and Vegas Pro 8c and you can edit even the kitchen sink. (AVCHD, M2t etc). JK

[Mike Kujbida]

Better yet, get an i7 processor and watch the kitchen sink do the editing for you 🙂
Yes, it’s that much faster than a quad core.

[David Shirey]

[Mike Kujbida] “Better yet, get an i7 processor and watch the kitchen sink do the editing for you 🙂
Yes, it’s that much faster than a quad core.”

Well to be fair, the i7’s are quad-core cpu’s.

I find anandtech’s benchmark comparison page to be pretty handy.
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?b=2

Under benchmark they’ve got x264 and divx encodes. The i7 965 is still $1000 on it’s own. I’ve never bought a top of the line cpu in my life. You end up paying double for something 5% faster, then a few months later they drop the price just to make you feel silly. the 940 and 920 are more my price range.

I got off topic though. His original question was is he safe with a sony or dell laptop or should he have a pc built. My answer would be that if you don’t need to edit in the field, got for a pc tower. You’ll get a lot more bang for your buck than a laptop. But obviously if being mobile can in any way help you get the job done, you’d have a hard time doing that with a tower.

[Mac Mcginnis]

Thanks for all the feedback. No real need to go mobile right now I guess. So here’s my next question. If I would go with an off the shelf tower, any recommendations? Sony, Dell, HP, etc. As long as it’s dual core I assume. I just don’t want all that extra crap loaded on the pc like they do normally.

[Mike Kujbida]

Mark, one guy on a different Vegas forum got a Dell xps 435 MT with an i7 920 (2.66 GHz) processor, 6 gigs of tri channel ram, 750 gig hard drive & a dual layer DVD burner for less than $1200 (Canadian).
This was in January so I’m sure prices have probably dropped since then.
At that price, it doesn’t make sense to settle for a dual core.

[Tyson Onaga]

I will have to make note of this! I found this at the Costco site:
https://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11466077&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|56671|4348&N=4017763&Mo=8&pos=3&No=2&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=4348&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10600-Cat56671&topnav=

$1,299.99 Dell XPS 435MT
Core i7-920 2.66GHz
512MB ATI Radeon HD4670
24″ monitor
640 GB HD
16x DVD+/-RW
Vista Home Premium
2-Year Warranty

I would surely love to edit on a 24″ monitor … [wish] …