Difference between PentiumD and P4...
 

I'm about to do some video editing in Premiere Pro and I'm wondering if it's worth upgrading my P4 3.0 GHz HT processor to a Pentium D 3.0GHz dual core processor.
What do you think? For processor bound processes, is it worth it? Does anyone think the Pentium D will drop in price in the near future?
Thank you...

if you do more than just edit a video at a time, yes, such as, play music, and serf the web while you are reencoding video, go for it, but if you just wait and watch as it reencodes, its a toss up, you will get some performance boost, but I’m not sure just how much, unless Premiere Pro can be run on both cores at the same time.

Does your motherboard support the Pentium D? Most should after a bios update, but it's worth checking. Also, is your processor really the bottleneck? Do you have enough memory, and is it dual-channel, for example?

The price is bound to drop, but it depends on how long you wait. Eventually, Intel will start with a new socket, at which point the Pentium D you could use will become rarer, and thus more expensive again.

And a final note: how long do you have your current system? Is the motherboard a PCI-express board with all the latest gadgets, or is it an older AGP board? Do you have DDR or DDR2? This could affect your choice, given the typical x year renewal period (as in: "I need a new PC"). You don't want to buy a processor now that cannot be used in an upgrade 6 months from now. At least, I wouldn't.

As I've mentioned in this thread, it actually takes more than that to get real use out of the second core... Of course the behaviour of Premiere will play a large role as to whether the upgrade will help with the editing. I was hoping to get more insight into the hardware aspect of the issue... that is, assuming the software is well threaded, will the increase in performance justify a new processor?

Here's an interesting question that might help me clarify things. How does the Pentium D with one core disabled compare with the P4 with hyperthreading disabled?

My motherboard should support the Pentium D. It's the same socket type and is already running a hyperthreading processor, so it will be a bit surprising if it won't. I'm sure the guys at the store will let me know...

How long do I have my current system? Do you mean how long have I had my current system? If so then I've had it for almost two years. It's a PCI-E board with DDR2 dual channel RAM. This will obviously be my last upgrade on this motherboard and I plan to keep it for a little while longer, I think. It's a fine machine and the only processor intensive thing I do is video editing...

Oh, and is the processor my bottleneck? That's a good question and I'm really not sure. The rendering is well threaded while the rest of the application is simply threaded. In some cases, Premiere is memory bound, but I'm mostly concerned with UI responsiveness and shaving some time off the encoding...

a quick view of the FAQ and yes the dual core will give you an advantage.

http://www.adobe.com/products/premie...ere_15_FAQ.pdf

In my experience, multimedia editing is one of the few areas of software where having the extra code helps a ton. If I remember correctly, Adobe has a history for making their products multi-cpu friendly as well.