Video Editing: i7-4700HQ vs. i7-2630QM

I'm considering a new computer sometime in the next couple months, but I've been hearing a lot about how Haswell isn't much of a performance boost from Ivy or Sandy Bridge. However, most of the people saying this are coming from a gaming perspective.

I need my computer to edit AVCHD files natively in Adobe Premiere, and render quickly. Rendering a final file pushes the CPU to 100%.

I was wondering how much better the 4700QM would fare than my current 2630QM in this sort of situation where the CPU is the bottleneck. Would improvement still be as meager as people claim?

 

Depending on your software settings: there will be about 40% speed increase with the newer platform/cpu.

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

See:
PassMark - Intel Core i7-2630QM @ 2.00GHz - Price performance comparison


The new cpu will still be maxed to 100%, but it will finish faster too.

To speed up your video editing as much as possible; max out the RAM - 32GB is a good place to start (depending on the size of the files).

Then, have dual SSD's (or more) if you can and use one for the O/S and Programs and the other for your temp/Scratch disk.


Don't believe the gaming tests: they're skewed.

See:
Intel Core i7 4700MQ vs 2630QM

 

Thanks for the info on the CPU.

Regarding hard drives, people on this site seem to really like SSDs, but I'm not sure I would see any benefit except if I used one as a scratch disk. I normally have smooth playback of AVCHD as it is, so I don't know if it's a huge concern for me. And I don't think an SSD would have any effect on render speed at all?

My current plan is to repeat my current setup with larger 1TB HDDs @ 7200rpm. I currently have 2x 500GB hybrid drives @ 7200rpm, arranged like this:

C: OS, applications (CS 5.5).
E: All source, project, and final render files.

Would I see any performance increase if I rendered to C: or another partition?

 

If you're not applying or scrubbing through the video, then multiple SSD's are not necessary. However, I would still recommend one (240GB or larger depending on the specific SSD considered and OP'ed by 30% or more) for the O/S and Program drives.

How I would setup your HDD based C: and E: drives is:

C: short stroked to 50GB free space (rest left un partitioned).

E: 100GB partition for WIP or smaller if you don't need a temporary capacity that big (work in progress; your rendering partition), remaining partition would be for data storage.


I would guess performance would decrease if you rendered on C: (you don't want to touch the O/S drive with additional storage subsystem requests).


Combining an SSD for C: with the properly partitioned E: drive would give you the most performance possible from your new setup, while also giving you the capacity you need for your data files.

 

A faster CPU is always desirable but a quad core is the most important specification you should look for. The more you edit the more you will notice the speed, but for small edits the difference will be negligible.

I tend to believe that the OS should always be on an SSD, but while one is good, two is even better. Three drives improves on your editing experience even more, and with 4 you have reached the holy grail of editing suits.

With the recent replacement of my OD for an HDD, I finally got (internally) to where I wanted to be.

 

An ssd as a scratch disk will definitely make editing smoother as tiller describes. It might make rendering faster too, but that is really a cpu and ram bound operation, and then source and target disk performance.
My only concern as a scratch disk, you could be wearing out that ssd quite fast. Iirc, nlr's may be one of those applications that may actually wear down a consumer ssd.

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