Upgrading for better video editing

Hey guys.

I'm currently finding my laptop a bit slow, especially for video editing and was wondering what you guys think a logical set of upgrades would be (or if it's even worth trying).

My current specs are as follows;
i5 -2410m @ 2.3GHz
Radeon HD 6470M 512gb
8GB RAM
Pretty standard HDD

My thoughts are I could get an SSD and place my current HDD (or maybe a new faster one) in a caddy in the optical drive bay.
Could also upgrade the RAM afaik (I have a 2011 sony s series)
Beyond this though I don't know what improvements I could make and if my processor is the bottleneck I'm obviously scuppered.

I'm also wondering if i do these upgrades how much longer will it make it "usable" for, an different it's worth spending the money on or if i should just go out an buy a new laptop right now (probably a macbook pro 15 or dell xps 15)

 

Depending if the video work is for pay or pleasure; your setup is woefully underpowered.

First and foremost you need a current platform with the highest performing cpu you can afford (Haswell based, quad core/eight thread design - or higher). Then you need Windows 8.1 Pro x64 along with 32GB of RAM or more (16GB is the bare minimum for video editing).

Finally, you'll want two high capacity, high performance SSD's (one for the O/S and the WIP files (work in progress) and the other for saving the finished work. This means at least 480/512GB SSD's such as Sandisk Extreme II's levels of sustained performance or higher.


To try to upgrade your current platform (Sandy Bridge) with the O/S, RAM and possibly the highest performing cpu it can handle will be a waste of resources, imo.


Sell the system you have and buy a more appropriate machine for the workloads you are currently doing.


Hope this helps a little.

Good luck.

 

I was worried that might be the case. Out of curiosity why would I need a second SSD for saving finished work.

So even if I did all these upgrades would I still be unable to edit HD footage in premiere pro without annoying amounts of lag?

 

The second drive is always recommended for fastest saving/transferring of files (work on one disk, save to a different one: always).

With your current platform you will still see annoying amounts of lag - the dual core SNB cpu is no match for a quad core current gen cpu such as an i7 4700HQ (for example).


See:
PassMark - Intel Core i5-2410M @ 2.30GHz - Price performance comparison


See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-4700HQ @ 2.40GHz - Price performance comparison

 

In addition to the suggestions tiller pointed out, one of the main components you should also be looking for is the GPU. Current GeForce GPUs (6xxM/7xxM) are woefully underpowered for any sort of non-hobby editing work due to gimpped CUDa/OpenCL/OpenGL/etc performance since those are heavily optimized for gaming and nothing else. Radeons are decent Jack-of-all-trades, though your best bet GPU-wise for non-hobby editing will be a Quadro or a FirePro, which you'll find in workstation-class laptops (Dell Precision, Lenovo Thinkpad W, and HP Elitebook -w and ZBook workstations) and in some Clevo gaming laptops (though they don't have the same level of build quality as business laptops).

 

I agree with Jarhead - make sure to check eBay and the Dell Outlet for great deals on Precision M6600 and M6700. Usually the AMD FireGL equipped models can be had for great prices. It might be cheaper than you think to upgrade.

If you can't afford a new system, feel free to get an SSD now. You can nearly always use it in your next system anyways. Just get one that is 7.5mm tall.

 

How gimped are they compared to lower-end Quadros (like the K1100M, for example) and how important is this for simple video editing (as opposed to CAD type work) when there's a fast quad-core CPU doing the heavy lifting?

I'm looking to buy a new laptop for occasional Final Cut editing work in addition to my current Photoshop and Lightroom editing and concluded a full workstation machine like the Lenovo W540 or Dell M4800 would be overkill for me so am instead looking at smaller, lighter quad-core setups like the Lenovo T440p and Dell M3800 (the Lenovo having the advantage of being able to take two 2.5" drives plus an M.2 drive)

 

If these benchmarks help at all, here's the difference between high-end gaming cards and professional cards: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...ards/718045-call-benchmarks-cad-opencl-3.html

If you're looking for something lighter and a bit less expensive, something like the T440p or M3800 should definitely do the trick.

 

get the fastest cpu and the most ram you can afford, thats your highest priority. most nle's are multi core optimized and work best in a 64bit environment.

your next priority is getting two fast data disks, one for os/storage and one as the scratch/work disk. the os/storage disk has to be an ssd. you dont need to have all your media here, but o\i suggest moving the files you are currently working on to this ssd and archive the done projects to an external source. the scratch disk is better off as a fast hdd. you could conceivably use an ssd, but hd video editing, especially scratch disk use, is one of those applications that can use up ssd writes.

lastly comes the gpu. why last? because most nle's out there are still not optimized for gpu usage. at best the gpu will accelerate certain transitions, effects and filters during preview- which is still important for you to view your work as realtime as possible. but the heavy lifting is done by the cpu for the most part and rendering is almost exclusively a cpu and i/o bound operation.

 

Don't bother with XPS series laptops if you are not into gaming, your machine likely won't take a 45w quad let alone one that is 55w but if you need raw power a higher end machine is your only choice. If you don't feel like spending the thousands that some machines cost you could look for one second hand that has the cpu performance that you need. Alienware on rare occasions are great deals as they often can be or already have a decent quad and the graphics card can be swapped out for something professional grade.