Newbie question about processors and graphics card

Hi, I bought an HP laptop April of 2006 with these requirements.

- Intel(R) Core(TM) Duo processor T2500 (2.0 GHz)
- 256MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) Go 7400
- 2.0GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024MB)

I am happy with the purchase but recently it has been making a lot of noise when video editing (which it never made that kind of noise before) getting over heated.

Now I am thinking about upgrading to HP with these specifications.

- Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo processor T7500 (2.20 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
- 128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
- 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)

My question is are the upgrades worth it to purchase a new system? I use it mainly for video editing and web creations (photoshop & Dreamweaver). I really do not know the difference between the T2500 vs T7500, and whether the 128mb NVIDA video card is an upgrade over the 256MB that I currently have. I would appreciate any reply from experts who know these types of things. I was also thinking about getting a Quad core desktop instead since I heard it is very good for video encoding but desktops are not really my cup of tea but if the benefits are worth it I might go with it. Thanks in advance.

 

in all honesty it really isn't worth it. 4gb ram...you'll probably never use. if you really really wanna upgrade try to go with a notebook with nvidia quadro or ati fireGL since you do seem to do more application related graphical work. either way, for the notebook you posted it would be a waste to upgrade. save up some money and then get one worth it.

 

Not much diffrence between those 2 machines. just as teh bove opster stated.

For video encoding a quad core is deffinitaly worth it. I do encoding to h.264 and having a quad core makes things soooo much quicker. Basically at the moment you canbuild a PC for $1000 Australian (sorry I live in Aus so not sure on prices elseware) that will be 3 to 4 times faster than any laptop at movie encoding.

 

Thanks guys, it seems like I might get the HP desktop with quad core 2.4. Now is having the best graphics card necc for video editing? I want to gather much data before purchasing a new desktop. I been reading the forums and I guess Thanksgiving or Christmas is the best time to purchase for a low price. Waiting is no issue.

I will probably wait until mid 2008 or whenever they start coming out with quad core laptops before I upgrade. Thanks.

 

Grphics card really isn't important for video editing. Becasue your not doing any rendering of 3D objects which is what graphics cards are mainly for.

Although if Nvidia manage to get enough people interested in CUDA (basically like the C programming laguage but for Nvidia graphics cards) and programs start comming out to run on teh graphics card you might see some big gains but its not likley for at least another 6 months probably more.

Also atm the lowest card that supports CUDA is the 8800 series but all of the 9 series when they are released are likley too. But teh general idea is that you get massivly parrallel processing at high speed on the graphics card becasue for instance an 8800GTX has 128 processors runing at 1.5Ghz that perfom 3 floating point ops per cycle. Now if you could harness that speed to encode video you would be encoding a two hour video in like 10 minutes or something crazy fast like that. Thats the reason they are working on this stuff but it is very new like 2 or 3 months old only so not too usefull yet. ATI have a similar thing happening aswell but I don;t know the specifics.

Anyways at the moment teh graphics card probably doesn't matter for your video editing. Give it a year and It could be a huge diffrence.

 

Hmm?.. Making a lot of noise? I think CPU, no wrong, I think RAM! No wrong? What do I do? How about the HDD? Hmm..... Never thought of that? Gpu? not even close!

 

Are you still speaking English man? Might as well come out and just tell the dude to check his hard drive. However, the CPUs can make noise.

 

yepiii QUIZ

Answer: cooler?


TO OP

just buy a desktop with quad core and 2gigs of ram with a 8500GT, 7900gs/atix1950, 8600GT/2600XT 2900HDXT/ /8800GTS/ 8800GTX depending on your budget and you will be fine

 

Thanks, I will do that probably during the holiday season. Are 4 gigs not necc at this point?

 

Is there a software or anything that will check on the condition of hard drive? Last night I bought couple of external hard drives and made a back up Just in case.

 

http://www.hdtune.com/

Hdtune is a popular program that is used.

 

no as long as you buy 1x2 GB or 2x1GB and you have some free slots left you will be fine, until now it is only supreme commannder which can use more ythan 2gigs of ram; DOOM 3, Quake 4 FEAR all modernish games cant use more than 2 gigs.

 

Thanks for all the help guys.