Which is the better processor?

[HumbleShia]

Hi, I've been looking at different cpu benchmarks but some are saying different things. Which is the better processor adobe premiere pro and after effects cs6? Intel core i5 3210M or AMD A8 4500M?

[John T Smith]

The best benchmark site for Premiere Pro is http://ppbm5.com/

If you are going to edit HiDef you need an i7 or for standard def video at least an i5

The AMD lacks some of the special firmware instructions that PPro uses, so will always be slower than Intel

If you are looking at a laptop, read http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1069742

-and http://forums.adobe.com/message/4578948

[HumbleShia]

I've ordered a samsung laptop with amd but I can return it to get the intel i5. I currently use an i3 and standard def is fine. Mainly need for hd editing and rendering, my budget is £430. How much slower is AMD considering its GPU is better?

[josephs51576386]

AMD CPU's are notably slower. When you compare core vs core AMD cores just simply aren't as efficient.

[excited_Genie16B8]

As a general rule for the Adobe CS6 suite, you should be looking at Intel and nVidia for best performance.

[HumbleShia]

But there are benchmarks which show that the AMD is faster so it's confusing me. My budget is low so I don't have money for cpu + dedicated graphics card

[Bill Gehrke]

Take a look at our Premiere Pro BenchMark (PPBM) results site and you will see that AMD does not score well.  AMD processors are missing some of the SSE instructions that Intel has and Adobe uses.  If you sort on "Computer type" Laptops you will find there is only one AMD laptop and that ranks at  bottom in performance at 989 out of 1032 tested systems

[HumbleShia]

I looked on that link but it doesn't show the processors I want. Intel core i5 3210m isn't on the list

[Bill Gehrke]

It is a rather new processor and is only a dual core unit, You really should shoot for a quad core processor

[HumbleShia]

Which do you suggest?

[John T Smith]

>need for hd editing

As I said back in reply #1 - you need an i7 to "smoothly" edit HiDef material... PLUS at least two 7200rpm hard drives (you MIGHT be able to have a 5400rpm drive for Windows and all software, but you MUST use a separate 7200rpm drive for your video files)

Did you click/read the links I provided in my 1st reply?

[HumbleShia]

Yes I did but a lot of the suggestions are above my budget

[John T Smith]

If you can't buy an i7 you will simply have to be ready to wait for PPro to work slowly with an i5

But, you REALLY need 2 hard drives (separate drives, never a partition)

[HumbleShia]

I currently use an intel i3-370m with 4gb ram. It took me 2 hours to render 2 mins of a 720p file on after effects. How long do you think this would take on an i5-3210m with 6gb ram and intel hd 4000?

[josephs51576386]

I'd honestly recommend buying a desktop, you'll get much more speed for the money. Then just use your current laptop for surfing the web etc. Because you can build a much faster desktop for the same amount of cash you'd spend on a laptop.

I personally spent around 1700USD on one of my laptops, and about 1600USD on one of my desktops. They are both using Sandy Bridge CPU's too, however the desktop is hands down faster.

[HumbleShia]

I know but I need laptop for portability reasons. I've looked at i5 with dedicated graphics cards on laptops but apparently these cards are outperformed by intel hd 4000

[John T Smith]

For Windows, the only graphic cards that give ANY benefit to CS5 and later are nVidia cards with 1Gig or more of video ram... no other brand does anything other than put an image on the screen

http://blogs.adobe.com/premiereprotraining/2011/02/red-yellow-and-green-render-bars.html

[HumbleShia]

My final decision is between

Asus K55A 15.6-inch Laptop (Black) (Intel Core i7 3610QM 2.3GHz, 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD, DVDSM DL, LAN, WLAN, Webcam, Integrated Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit)

and

Acer Aspire 5755G

• Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Quad Core Processor
• 15.6" HD Screen
• Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64-bit
• 6GB RAM
• 500GB HDD
• DVD Rewriter
• Dedicated GT 630M 1GB Graphics

[Guest]

I think your budget is too small amount to get a laptop which runs smoothly AE CS6.

With 6Gb Ram you will wait a lot for rendering, and RAM preview. Especially with HD formats.Except if you just cut footages with 1 video track and render them, without effects,and  and multiple layers in AE.

I would buy these laptops for sd video editing only.Or use for very simple HD projects only.

[HumbleShia]

The intel website says the i7 3610qm processor can take up to 32gb ram but the crucial website says 8gb ram. Why is that?

[John T Smith]

The limit for a particular CPU (and verison of Windows... Win7 Home 64bit only goes to 16Gig, you need Win7 PRO 64bit for above 16gig) is for the CPU... the actual motherboard and BIOS may be different

What do the Acer and Asus sites say about the maximum ram for their specific models?

>Dedicated GT 630M 1GB Graphics

Have you gone to the benchmark site to see if that graphics adapter is listed?

[HumbleShia]

Both say 8gb max... is there no way to increase?

It's not listed. It's rating is higher than intel hd 4000 on this website http://forums.adobe.com/message/4743143#4743143

But the 3rd gen i7's rating is quite a bit higher than 2nd gen i7

[John T Smith]

>Both say 8gb max... is there no way to increase?

Well... if the hardware vendor says their product has a max of 8Gig, I would guess that is really the max their hardware will accept

Way back in #1 I posted links about laptop video editing... at least one of which leads to a company (or two?) that specialize in laptops for video editing

If you can't afford to buy a specialty laptop, you will simply have to use what you can afford

[HumbleShia]

Also I'm thinking of buying an external usb 3.0 1TB hard drive. Good idea?

[John T Smith]

I only have USB2 externals, which are not fast enough for video editing... only to make SLOW TRANSFER backup copies

USB3 is supposed to be fast enough for video editing... or eSata