Faster processor or more memory

closed

any processor can edit video, in most cases, it's simply a file chop and merge operation, ram and disk are more important than cpu speedwise.

Nilrem

closed wrote: »

any processor can edit video, in most cases, it's simply a file chop and merge operation, ram and disk are more important than cpu speedwise.

Aye, I would go for more ram than a faster CPU, as if you don't have enough ram to load the images into memory whilst it's working on them, you're going to be spending a fair bit of time waiting for the HDD to chug along.

S0litaire

for graphic work (images or video) ram and graphics card are the 2 main things you should look at!

If it's "intel" graphics then it will be mediocre for graphic intensive work . See what laptops in your price range have Nvidia or AMD graphics listed.

higher end laptops have 2 graphics cards a basic one for simple day to day Office work and a second more powerful card for games or movie playback.

if you have a good graphics you can balance it out with a slightly slower CPU.

closed

OP is talking about editing a few photo's or chopping up a wedding video, not running the latest game, onboard graphics can do that easily, and probably with a lot less power, heat, and fan noise.

Cycrow

you could simply check what your cpu/memory usage is while you are editing them.

if memory usage is high, then more memory could help, if its not, then any extra memory will be wasted

Cycrow

closed wrote: »

OP is talking about editing a few photo's or chopping up a wedding video, not running the latest game, onboard graphics can do that easily, and probably with a lot less power, heat, and fan noise.

actually this depends on the software thats being used.

graphics cards are very good with graphics work, just look at the Quadro/Tesla cards, which are designed for this purpose.

if the software uses Cuda or OpenGL then a decent gaming card can actually make a huge difference.

of course, it does depend on the usage, a few bits of graphics/video editing from time to time is probably not worth the expensive.
If its something that might be done alot, then it could be

Johnmcl7

closed wrote: »

any processor can edit video, in most cases, it's simply a file chop and merge operation, ram and disk are more important than cpu speedwise.

While any processor can edit video, the time taken will vary considerably and it's the processor's performance that will largely determine the time taken as the ram and storage have much less of an impact. Moving from a quad core i7 to a higher clocked hex core i7 has had a far bigger impact on encode times particularly for programs that are well optimised for large numbers of simultaneous threads whereas ram/storage upgrades haven't made much difference (where the original hardware was reasonable).

John

Cycrow

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

While any processor can edit video, the time taken will vary considerably and it's the processor's performance that will largely determine the time taken as the ram and storage have much less of an impact. Moving from a quad core i7 to a higher clocked hex core i7 has had a far bigger impact on encode times particularly for programs that are well optimised for large numbers of simultaneous threads whereas ram/storage upgrades haven't made much difference (where the original hardware was reasonable).

John

unless of course you dont have enough ram to perform the task. Then installing ram can have the biggest impact.

but if you are not maxing out the ram, then installing more will not make much of a difference

Johnmcl7

That's why I mentioned where ram was reasonable in my last comment, it is certainly true that if you don't have enough ram the machine will see the biggest improvement with more ram but at the moment most machines (even cheaper ones) tend to have fairly generous amounts of memory whereas previously many machines would be underspecced on ram. Currently it tends to be Ultrabooks and other similar ultralights with soldered ram than can have issues with lack of ram.

John

closed

It's upto the op, but, machines today are powerful, and really, editing a photo is frankly a trivial task, very trivial, as it editing a one off wedding video, encoding can be left overnight, it won't take anywhere near that long, but the point is it doesn't matter unless it's going on the next news bulletin, does it need a top of the range machine, I doubt it very much, could it be done on a £350 laptop, yes.