Upgrading Current Laptop vs Buying a New One (For Video Editing and Recording)

[T-Nichs]

Hello Everyone!

I have thought about a few things since my last posting and had a quick question about my laptop. I have an Asus X550C with Intel Core i3-3217u that runs at 1.8ghz. It has 4 gb of ram with about 115 mb dedicated to video. I use it mostly for internet browsing and light gaming and school and some audio recording. My question is this: I want to use this for video editing (and possibly recording but not necesary) and it does handle some of it fairly nicely. I do mostly just cutting and some effects but nothing hardcore. It does lag sometimes and it does run a bit slow. Would it be beneficial overall to upgrade the RAM to 8GB and dedicate 1GB towards video and get an SSD or should I just get a new laptop altogether? I would be storing everything on an external drive anyway so the SSD doesn't get worn out. I'm not sure if the processor would be good enough or if it's too slow for those upgrades to not work at all.

Thank you for your help

 

[digitaldoc]

I have a Lenovo laptop with that Core i3-3217U chip. It is an Ivy bridge, dual core part with hyperthreading.

I find the chip quite powerful for the power envelope it uses, but I would not want to use it for video editing, and I doubt upgrading the RAM from 4 to 8 GB is going to change things much for you.

The SSD will speed up the system, but not make that much of an overall difference on video editing with the Core i3 as the CPU.

http/www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1703023/ssd-faster-hdd-video-editing.html

The problem is that all the mobile notebook CPU's are dual core, and not quad cores in the Intel lineup.

I would live with your current setup, or build a desktop where you can get the right Core i7 processor for video editing. I don't see upgrading your current laptop worth the money for the performance gain to be expected.

 

[T-Nichs]

I would live with your current setup, or build a desktop where you can get the right Core i7 processor for video editing.

I forgot to mention that I did build a computer for editing but this is for when I'm on the go lol. I'd transfer files back and forth and the like just wanted to know if doing a few upgrades would let me do some light editing and I'd render on my actual super computer

 

[digitaldoc]

Than I think the upgrade that will help the most would be to increase it up to 8 GB of RAM.

 

[T-Nichs]

Alright! I will try that. So would dedicating 1 gb to video be good or would that be impossible? Also, would you not go with the SSD then?

 

[digitaldoc]

With 8 GB of RAM, than I would max out the video RAM for what it is worth.

I am a big fan of SSD's, and am amazed at how fast the computer can boot, shutdown, and load programs. That being said, from the link I provided, it does not appear that video editing will proceed significantly faster so realize what the benefits and limitations of an SSD are.