Radeon 6850 or 6570 or ? for HD video editing?

[echo14612]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: this week BUDGET RANGE: Less than $250
USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT:
1. HD Video editing
2. Windows Media Center recording and viewing
3. Multitasking database, file management,Internet browsing and the like.
GPU, POWER SUPPLY, etc: Vendor is recommending an Asus P8P67 DLX-3 motherboard with an Intel i7 2600K CPU and a CoolMax 700W PSU. 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz memory

If anybody wants to comment on those components, please have at it. My main concern, however, is to obtain the best machine under $2000 for HD video transcoding and editing. To the extend the GPU is relevant for performing these tasks, is the 6850 markedly better than the 6570? Are there other Radeon cards which would be preferable?

OVERCLOCKING: No
Not interested in Multiple cards.

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1200 (although I occasionally tease myself with thoughts of a 2560x1440 Ultrasharp)

I'll be running 2 monitors, using DVI and HDMI.

When I buy my own parts, I use Newegg, but the vendor has his own suppliers.

 

[farrengottu]

a 2600k wont help your video editing much. your vendor is .... um not well trained. if all your doing is video editing all you need is a H series motherboard not a P. H series is for intel graphics, Z series does intel graphics to but its so that you can use intel or a dedicated card at will. Z series also supports ssd cacheing which gives hard drive speed increases on stuff you use a lot.

but converting movies is mostly cpu and only on second pass filtering does the 2600k do decently better than the 2500k. but since you dont want to overclock you mays well get a 2500 (non-k) you get less of a graphics card in it but that doesnt matter for what you need. what you need is the quicksync feature built into every sandybridge cpu and there is no difference between quicksync on k or non-k cpus.

here is a nice link showing the with and without quicksync comparisons.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20188/17

now intel only supports 2 monitors so if you think you might want 3 you will need to hold off on that. hopefully ive bridge can drive 3.

 

[nordlead]

It depends on what he is trying to achieve. Quicksync does extremely fast trasncoding with a minor hit to quality as clearly shown in - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/9 - I'm by no means a video snob, but could easily distinguish between the stills (especially the GTX still which is horrible)

If best quality in the shortest amount of time is your concern, then the fastest CPU possible is the way to go. With no overclocking a i7-2600 is just as good as the k version for $15 less. Based on the fact that the second pass of H.264 encoding is much slower than the first, the speed boost the i7 can provide some savings in time (if absolutely needed). The next question is if you really need to shave those 10-20 minutes off for an average length movie. If you really wanted to have the best quality at the fastest rate you'd overclock the processor.

If fast transcoding with minimal quality loss is desired than an i5 with quick sync would be sufficient since it is significantly faster than any other option out there.

Just until very recently I thought a graphics card was necessary. But thanks to recent advancements in integrated graphics it really doesn't make that much of a difference. You could just stick with the integrated graphics and switch between quick sync and without depending on your needs. You can not run Quick Sync with a dedicated graphics card at this time. As previously pointed out, you'd need a H or Z series motherboard to do this since the P series does not support the built in graphics.