CPU for 4k video editing?

nightrider1470 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:09

I am looking to put together a PC for 4k video editing from my camcorder as well as some light gaming.

Any ideas whats good to buy for putting a decent budget system together with overclocking in mind?

thanks!!

Sin_Chase · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:17

What is your budget?

For video encoding purely you may want to consider an 8 Core AMD chip.

However, for video encoding + other things like gaming you want a HyperThreaded Intel chip.

cmndr_andi · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:19

Hi there,

Do you have an idea of your budget for your new system? As 4K needs a pretty beefy CPU, but also loads of RAM and a decent SSD.

Martini1991 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:20

Anyway you can GPU accelerate?

nightrider1470 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:22

am happy to pay what ever I need to really. Say CPU no more than £350 new or used

Do editing software like sony vegas even support 8 cores these days?

Martini1991 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:24

4930K would be what I'd aim for.

You can get second hand 3930K's for ~300.

cmndr_andi · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:28

Well for under £300 for the CPU the best option is probably the i7 4770K - especially if you overclock it.

However, if your budget is high then the i7 4930K Ivy Bridge-E Hex core is more powerful, but very expensive at £426.

Edit: As Martini1991 says, a second-hand i7 3930K is a very good option for your particular use and budget, as its not much slower than the 4930k.

As for the other parts, I would recommend at least 16GB of DDR3 RAM, at least a 480/500GB SSD like the Samsung 840 Evo.

May I ask what software you use to edit videos? If you are using software that can use GPU power, then getting a suitable GPU would be useful.

nightrider1470 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:28

Martini1991 said:
4930K would be what I'd aim for.

You can get second hand 3930K's for ~300.

Thanks! is that plenty enough with a decent overclock?

nightrider1470 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:30

cmndr_andi said:
Well for under £300 for the CPU the best option is probably the i7 4770K - especially if you overclock it.

However, if your budget is high then the i7 4930K Ivy Bridge-E Hex core is more powerful, but very expensive at £426.

As for the other parts, I would recommend at least 16GB of DDR3 RAM, at least a 480/500GB SSD like the Samsung 840 Evo.

May I ask what software you use to edit videos? If you are using software that can use GPU power, then getting a suitable GPU would be useful.

Well I am just learning to be honest, but plan to use Sony Vegas, unless something else allows for faster speeds?

cmndr_andi · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:43

In that case, you just need a decent card which uses OpenCL (which all modern AMD and Nvidia cards do).

Of the ones available I would suggest the R9 280X, as it's a fast cards with lots of video memory, plenty of bandwidth and a lot of GPU grunt. It also runs modern games very nicely. If you want to spend a bit less then the R9 280 (non-X) is a slightly stripped down version of the 280X, but with the same memory.

nightrider1470 · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:54

Thanks!, am guessing R9 280X would melt for 4k gaming!?

cmndr_andi · 31 Mar 2014 at 12:55

nightrider1470 said:
Thanks!, am guessing R9 280X would melt for 4k gaming!?

Oh yes, for 4K gaming you really need at least two very high end graphics cards like the GTX 780Ti or R9 290X.

GefGz · 31 Mar 2014 at 21:28

cmndr_andi said:
Oh yes, for 4K gaming you really need at least two very high end graphics cards like the GTX 780Ti or R9 290X.

and run it at like low/medium if you want acceptable framerates

nightrider1470 · 9 Apr 2014 at 13:27

Dont AMD do decent cheaper CPU`s that overclocked can match the performance of Intel? Am sure AMD do 6 or 8 cores cheaper dont they? that would work well for light gaming and video editing?

cmndr_andi · 9 Apr 2014 at 13:41

Oh, they certainly do CPUs that can overclock well - however even then they don't seem to be any faster than the high-end intel options.

For example the AMD FX-9590 is a Piledriver 8 core 140W CPU clocked at 4.7GHz (5.0GHz turbo) and costs £222. It is effectively an FX 8300 CPU which was tested by AMD to be a good one and clocked much higher and given a new name.

The reviews show that at stock speeds the FX-9570 is a bit slower than the i7 4770K at stock speeds (see here for the cinebench test) and can't overclock very well (5GHz if you are lucky and have very good cooling). In contrast the i7 4770K regularly overclocks from 3.5GHz stock to 4.5GHz - so it can therefore soundly beat an overclocked FX 9570.

If you do plan to do 4K video editing then get the best CPU you can afford. If you can only afford an AMD FX-6300 then that is the best CPU to buy. However, if you can afford a K series i5 or better then its Intel you want to stick with- since the 4K video editing will eat up as much CPU power as you can give it.

Martini1991 · 9 Apr 2014 at 13:43

nightrider1470 said:
Dont AMD do decent cheaper CPU`s that overclocked can match the performance of Intel? Am sure AMD do 6 or 8 cores cheaper dont they? that would work well for light gaming and video editing?

We're talking 4K video editing.

While the FX83's can be better in editing software than the i5's, the i7's are a different story, but even the traditional 4 core 8 thread i7's aren't going to be great, you want the monster 6 core 12 threads, which the AMD's can't touch.

PCZ · 9 Apr 2014 at 18:02

Martini1991 said:
We're talking 4K video editing.

While the FX83's can be better in editing software than the i5's, the i7's are a different story, but even the traditional 4 core 8 thread i7's aren't going to be great, you want the monster 6 core 12 threads, which the AMD's can't touch.

+1

N19h7m4r3 · 9 Apr 2014 at 18:15

If you're going to be exporting into the h.264 codec get a new i7 CPU. They feature QuickSync which significantly speeds up transcoding. You'll also want AMD GPU's for OpenCL compute and rendering.

In Fairness, Sony Vegas isn't all that fast compared to Premiere, and FCPX for 4K and OpenCL.

Get the best i7 you can and some decent GPU's, and the only bottleneck Will be your storage. For 4K you want at least around 450MB/s for working with raw footage otherwise you'll be skipping and dropping frames during editing, which makes it extremely annoying to work with.

In Fact your storage will be a much larger factor sometimes, and SSD's or large RAID 5/6 arrays are needed.
Remember UHD/4K raw footage is absolutely massive compared to 1080p.

Looking at a 24:57 minute ProRess 4444 file here, it's 56.45GB in size at 1920x1080.

nightrider1470 · 28 Apr 2014 at 21:48

Would a overclocked Intel I5-2500K struggle with 4k video?

nightrider1470 · 29 Apr 2014 at 14:56

Anyone^?