Is this computer good enough for HD editing?

[duderdude2]

Hey guys, so I'm looking to buy a new machine and I was hoping some of you with experience editing HD videos with Vegas could tell me if this computer is up to the task:

HP Desktop PC
Intel® Core™ i7-920 Processor
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit edition
9GB DDR3 system memory.
1 Terabyte hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 graphics card with 1GB GDDR3 dedicated graphics memory.

http://www.frys.com/product/5944184?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

It's only $849, which seems like a good price, but I'm not too familiar with the latest components. Is the i7 a good processor?

If this isn't a good computer for HD editing, do you have any better recommendations for around a grand? Thanks!

[redwudz]

It looks sufficient for HD editing. Don't know about the video card, probably OK. I would add two more hard drives as you don't really want to use the boot drive for editing as that would likely slow down the process because of constant OS boot drive accesses. You could use the large boot drive to store completed archive files on. Two more large HDDs would bring the price up to about $1000US, depending on the size installed.

[duderdude2]

Cool man, thanks for the advice. Now I'm sort of a layman--I guess I understand the need for two Hard Drives, but why three exactly?

[ron spencer]

I have a core2duo 8400 and it is fine

[redwudz]

I use a small, fast HDD for boot. I have a 150GB Raptor 10K RPM boot drive on the PC in my Computer Details. I also have two 500GB drives and I do my editing and encoding between them. I call one 'Archive' and the other 'Edit'. If you also have a large boot drive, you can transfer your finished videos to it for storage or just use it for backup of data on the other drives.

Just don't use it for encoding, capturing or editing if you can avoid it, IMO. I also use single partitions on all my HDDs most times. If you partition your boot drive, that just makes it a bit faster to search and to defrag, doesn't really do much of anything for encoding or editing as you are still using the very same controller and the same data channel for all reads/writes, along with the OS also accessing that same drive, controller and channel, all at the same time.

I also have storage available on my server PCs I access over my LAN system. When working with video, especially HD video, you need a lot of HDD space.

One option you might consider is to get something like my 150GB Raptor for boot and clone the OS from the huge boot drive to it, then use the huge ex-boot drive for your edit or archive drive, also adding another large HDD. IMO, it's really a waste to have a huge boot drive. This is a simple enough operation with programs from the HDD manufacturer or something like True Image or Ghost. Most likely, the boot drive will be filled with crapware that you don't want or need and that the PC manufacturer puts on it, and you would want to clean that out anyway and leave just the OS, which will take up a lot less space. And I suspect the OS will run a fair bit faster without all that.

A final note, most PCs sold these days are overly 'green' and they may have performance settings turned down quite a bit. If you want best performance, you may have to re-adjust some of those.

[DarrellS]

I have a 160GB boot drive, 500GB storage drive for smaller files (pictures and stuff). A 750GB capture drive, two 1TB Seagate storage drives and had to buy a WD 1TB storage drive Sunday because I filled one Seagate up. Watch out when buying drives. I started to grab a 1.5TB Seagate that was $15 more than the 1TB WD but when I looked closer, the drive speed was only 5900rpm.

I also have a 1TB WD Mybook e-SATA, firewire, USB external drive to play videos on my LCD TV. Would like to buy a couple more but the prices have skyrocketed for these drives. The USB drive sells for what I paid for the e-SATA and e-SATA sells for $200 now if you can find them.