Alienware M17X good for Premiere?
 

Hello sirs,

I wish to have a total upgrade of my computing set up. Although I have read this particular laptop is for game situations, would the specs be enough to efficiently run and render AVCHD video in CS5?

Some details

Review of the Alienware M17X R2 Hardware Review | TOG - The Older Gamers

Re: Alienware M17X good for Premiere?
 

I would suggest something that has nVidia CUDA graphic card instead of ATI, and preferably the new Sandy Bridge i7 CPU, which is much more efficient than i7-920. This is the kind of specs I would be looking for: Newegg.com - MSI GT780R-012US Notebook Intel Core i7 2630QM(2.00GHz) 17.3" 16GB Memory 1TB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M or Newegg.com - MSI G Series GT780DXR-405US Notebook Intel Core i7 2670QM(2.20GHz) 17.3" 12GB Memory DDR3 1TB HDD 7200rpm DVD Super Multi NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570M

Re: Alienware M17X good for Premiere?
 

M17X I have on my mind has nVidia CUDA graphic card.

I guess I really want to know if high spec pc's like these handle audio visual production software ok or not.

Re: Alienware M17X good for Premiere?
 

Then answer is most likely yes.

There are two possible bottlenecks:

1. AVCHD footage - very CPU intensive so you want to have as much CPU power as you can for editing this type of footage.

2. Uncompressed or high-bitrate codecs which will need high HDD throughput to playback smoothly. Toward this end you would need an eSata/USB 3.0 and an external RAID array. Or thunderbolt once it is available on the PC.

Also, if you want a decent audio output, you will most likely need an external audio interface. What is good enough for gamers is not necessarily good enough for production. External audio can also be had with an external video monitoring solution, like BlackMagic Intensity or Matrox MXO, so you get only one piece of external hardware.

Premiere Pro does boast the ability for proper monitoring without any third-party device, but you would certainly need an external monitor for good color.

That said, if you do not need external monitoring, such a machine can easily be enough for you. After all, people do use their laptops to edit, especially if their goal is to publish over the Internet.

Re: Alienware M17X good for Premiere?
 

Sure, I use the little Alienware M11x and it does fine with Premiere 5.5 and my camera files (Canon 5DII and Canon XF100). The M11x seems limited to just a couple of layers of video for real time HD output - the M17x should do quite a bit better.