[jwilder]

Please can anyone point me at some reliable benchmarks comparing the performance of the current crop of Intel/AMD destop CPUs when used for editing AVCHD files?

I have a Panasonic SD5 and want to have a go at editing some clips using the bundled HD Writer software, or even one of the paid-for editors out there. At the moment I just have a Core Due T2300 in my laptop, and it can't even handle playback at more than a frame every now and then!

I am basically trying to find out whether I need to go for the fastest Core 2 Quad or Phenom, or whether a more thermally efficient (and wallet-friendly) Core 2 Duo would do. I'd even be tempted by the new AMD 780G chipset with the Athlon 4850e since it seems like a great media platform and I think an IGP should be good enough for me as I am not a gamer - but perhaps the 4850e just won't have enough grunt for editing? I'd like some real world figures for frame rates and rendering times rather than some manufacturer's minimum spec, and have failed to find any so far.

I would also like to find a good Linux-based editor, but that's a whole different thread...!

Thanks in advance,
Justin

[owizard]

I haven't seen any AVCHD editing benchmarks of these processors.It would be great, if some site like Anandtech publishes such benchmarks. However, I believe a Core 2 quad (at least a Q6700/Q9450) would be better than a Core 2 Duo for editing. The Q9450 seems to be very good value for money at the moment. It seems to be faster than Phenom X4 9850 for most kinds of encoding.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles...537&cid=2&pg=9 (No AVCHD benchmarks here)

I would recommend an ATI HD3650 graphics card to offload HD playback to GPU. Unfortunately, the current graphics cards don't support offloading HD editing to GPU.

[senu]

Benchmarking would be difficult , because

Actually the AVCHD files are not identical, both codecs and encoding bitrate

Playback and editing are software dependent
and
Some graphics cards are able to use thier GPUs to offload CPU work.. but this is not a feature all software can take advantage of
What is clearer is than quad core> dual core> single core and More ram helps. Also as suggested above , a decent graphics card might make a difference
The Power DVD ultra ( and Win DVD) HD compatibilty hardware specs are HD DVD/BD playback only