Laptop advice for video converting

[riyanna]

Hello guys,
I'm looking for a laptop for internet & video converting. I have some DVDs & .TS videos captured from TV. I would like to convert this DVDs/files to MP4/MKV/AVI etc. I would like to buy a cheap (price-performance) laptop. what is your advice?

[vid.user]

Anything that contains an 'i' CPU.

[redwudz]

Most of the newer laptops are running Windows 8.1, usually 64bit. That will somewhat determine your software choices.

I have a ASUS laptop with a i3-3217U @ 1.8Ghz and 4GB RAM with 200GB HDD, running W8.1 64bit. It would be marginal at best for MKV conversions. I use my desktop PC for that.

The words 'cheap' and 'performance' really don't work together well. Maybe a Intel i5 or a quad core AMD CPU at 2 - 3GHZ. Also 8GB RAM would be better and either a larger main drive (500GB) or probably better, a external HDD. Newer laptops also often have USB 3.0 and that is much faster. I have a 1TB USB 3.0 WD drive that runs off my laptop and performs very well.

Anyway, for cheap, look into ASUS laptops. You can even find refurbished models with much better specifications for a economy price.

[riyanna]

Thank you for your replies. What do you think about i5 4200m? May I choice this CPU? Is "CPU clock speed" primary factor for video converting? Thanks.

[turk690]

What do you think about i5 4200m? May I choice this CPU? Is "CPU clock speed" primary factor for video converting? Thanks.

That is OK. But that is not the limiting factor of a laptop with what you want to do. You have to use a separate external hard drive (preferably non-USB) to put your converted and to-be-converted files into. Never use the system drive for this.

[pandy]

Thank you for your replies. What do you think about i5 4200m? May I choice this CPU? Is "CPU clock speed" primary factor for video converting? Thanks.

Yes, go for i5 or i7 (but i would recommend to highest possible i5 than lower clocked i7).
And as pointed by turk690 focus on storage performance - external HDD at least USB3 but eSATA preferred (or use notebooks that provide 2 HDD slots) SDD for system is nice but not absolute must.

[riyanna]

Thank you for your replies. What do you think about i5 4200m? May I choice this CPU? Is "CPU clock speed" primary factor for video converting? Thanks.

Yes, go for i5 or i7 (but i would recommend to highest possible i5 than lower clocked i7).
And as pointed by turk690 focus on storage performance - external HDD at least USB3 but eSATA preferred (or use notebooks that provide 2 HDD slots) SDD for system is nice but not absolute must.

Thank you for your reply.
What is the effect of CPU's Cache to video converting time? (3MB/6MB) Is 4 GB of RAM enough? Thanks.

[pandy]

Thank you for your replies. What do you think about i5 4200m? May I choice this CPU? Is "CPU clock speed" primary factor for video converting? Thanks.

Yes, go for i5 or i7 (but i would recommend to highest possible i5 than lower clocked i7).
And as pointed by turk690 focus on storage performance - external HDD at least USB3 but eSATA preferred (or use notebooks that provide 2 HDD slots) SDD for system is nice but not absolute must.

Thank you for your reply.
What is the effect of CPU's Cache to video converting time? (3MB/6MB) Is 4 GB of RAM enough? Thanks.

Under 32 bit environment application can use max 2GB (special cases 3GB) memory.
Sometimes this can be too low for HD application (serious and big ones) so all depends from application perspective.
More cache is generally better but cache architecture is also important (so sometimes smaller cache is efficient as larger).

I would recommend 6 - 8GB of memory, non integrated graphics card with own memory, i5 highest possible clock CPU - i7 have added hyper-threading thus usually can be faster than 10 - 15% in real life apps (thus it is better to buy i5 with clock faster by 10 15% to achieve same performance as i7).

[riyanna]

Thank you for all your replies.
May I choice a Nvidia GPU? I think, CUDA technology has high conversion speed.

[pandy]

Thank you for all your replies.
May I choice a Nvidia GPU? I think, CUDA technology has high conversion speed.

NVidia is fine - IMHO drivers quality slightly better than AMD, CUDA is practically not used unless you going for very limited number of plugins and software solutions where most of them focus on speed not quality.