Explain Why I Care About Ghz

[<Ghz>]

ok, so i'm checking out all these computers for future editing and am wondering about ghz. a dual 1.8 vs. a dual. 2.5 or 2ghz system... what's the big deal and why do i care? does it really make that much of a difference if all i want to do is edit, render, burn, etc.?

[atomic]

It's just a faster processor. Information is processed faster, which gets you a faster running machine.

That's my non-technical answer, although I'm sure someone can give a more-detailed answer here.

[Sportsguy]

I use a 2.4GHz on channel 1 positive quite often.

Oh wait, that's not the question.

[<Ghz>]

Originally posted by atomic:
It's just a faster processor. Information is processed faster, which gets you a faster running machine.

That's my non-technical answer, although I'm sure someone can give a more-detailed answer here. does it really make that big a difference? does the performance suffer or is that improved? it seems the price range between a dual 1.8 and dual 2.0 is quite a bit.

[<Unregistered User>]

Depends on what you're doing with it. If you're just using a word processor, no, you could get by with a slow machine. If you're gaming or editing video where you have to render stuff, then the faster processor will help - -- a caveat there though is that you want to balance processor speed with how much RAM you have, unless you have enough cash to max both out. In other words, a 2.5ghz machine with 128 megs of ram will run much slower than a 1.8ghz machine with a gig of ram.

[<Ghz>]

how about a dual 1.8 with 2gig RAM for video editing?

[quicklad]

processor speed is only ONE of the factors involved in overall computer speed. Cache sizes and levels, RAM etc also come into play.

The differences between the dual 1.8 & 2.0 may also have to do with those other factors (also things like HD size and type).

RAM is by far the thing you want to get as much of as possible. And between the 1.8 & 2.0 there may not be that much of a bump in the speed.

A Dual 1.8 loaded with RAM will perform fine - but keep in mind "...all I want to do is edit, render, burn" that aside from gaming - editing, rendering and burning video are the most processor intensive tasks.

I do my editing, rendering and burning on a single G4/1.33 processor w/1.25g of ram- so I think you'll have no troubles with a dual G5 1.8 and 2g's of ram.

[Birdy]

This thread caught my attention, so I asked a tech friend for his opinion. Here is what he wrote:

IMO using a fast single processor with appropriate video and hard drive ability is a much smarter and more economic way to go. Some people get all excited about shaving a couple of minutes off some large processing time interval without considering the investment to do it. I like to measure the cost by the minute, hour, day or week. Often it takes years to recover an investment in more speed, especially when it is possible to do something else while the machine is chugging away.