ok so am I thinking too much here

I have pinnacle ultimate 12 all ready to go, now just need a PC

Was pricing new Dell's I7

I can get a great system with the 920 i7 proc (2.66 ghz)
12gb of ram
1tb hard drive
1.7gb vid card

I keep wavering on spending the extra $450 on upping to the i7 950 (3ghz)

the pinnacle box says only needs you know dual core blah blah of course i dont want the minimum but am i way overstepping what I need with spending the extra $450 going to the 3ghz instead of the 2.66 ghz i7?

Im thinking with the huge vid card and tons of ram that should be more than enough, HELP!!!!!


THanks!


Paul

I just built a new machine with an i7 920 processor and so far it's plenty fast with Studio 12 Ultimate. With uncomplicated HD Divx files rendered from HDV, render time is about the same as run time. I'm also running Magic Bullet Looks without problems for the first time ever. I'm mostly moving on to a 64 bit application but I'll keep using Studio for simple stuff.

Just be aware that a number of Dell models come with crippled BIOS, preventing you to overclock and thus requiring you to get an exorbitantly priced faster CPU (that is where their profit comes from).

A separate i7-950 on nearly any streetcorner is around the same price as Dell charges you for upgrading and they keep the 920. That IMO is stealing you blind.

forgot to mention I have a canon VX10 HD camcorder and will be using avchd format.....

so is 64 bit software better that pinnacle ultimate 12?

All the more reason to maybe forget Dell. AVCHD usually requires a new, faster and much more expensive computer, only they don't tell you that when you buy the camera. i7-920 will not be enough, you need to OC it to make it barely usable and a very good disk setup as well. Start with doubling your budget, because even an i7-950 will normally not do. You need at least an i7-975 Extreme and preferably a dual W5580 or W5590 Xeon system.

JD says it runs fine and you say it doesn't...interesting. For pinnacle it says the minimum specs are core 2 duo... so an i7 with 8 cores isnt enuf???

There is an enormous difference between HDV (as in JD's case) and AVCHD. AVCHD requires far more muscle to edit and even on 8 core machines (i7 is only 4 core plus HT) editing AVCHD is a serious burden.