Hey level1techs,
For school and some side-work, I’ve been doing video editing. I’m considering turning it into a more serious side-hustle (seeking commissions and one-offs, etc.) and it’s another thing leading me to feel like I should upgrade my laptop.
I’ve got a second-hand MSI GS63VR with an i7-6700HQ and a GTX 1060 (6GB), 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB Samsung 960 Evo. All things considered, it’s a pretty great machine. I recently serviced the display, heatsink fans, and replaced the battery in anticipation of selling the laptop after I upgrade/replace it.
I’d like to upgrade to a smaller laptop with a better CPU and use an external GPU as my “desk hub” for all my peripherals. But, complications stemming from using an eGPU and Ryzen 4000 not supporting Thunerbolt 3 makes me think I might should get a laptop with an integrated GPU. If going that route, I feel like I should be waiting for the next generation of laptops to come out hopefully in ~January next year…
That said, I’m trying to figure out what would improve my experience actually editing video in Premiere Pro, and most testing and numbers I find regarding performance only talk about render times. IMO, this is not a very useful metric as it’s the very last (and smallest part) of any project I’ve worked on. What’s more, it’s a “passive” task I can start and do something else while it’s happening.
For example, a 15-minute documentary probably took more than two weeks of time editing and that was more painful and frustrating due to jittery start/stop behavior when playing clips to see how the edit looks. Or the system hanging up while scrubbing. Or Premier Pro getting bogged down and crashing–which may or may not improve with better hardware, but I assume it would be better if everything else is more stable and responsive…
Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had input on what kind of improvements I might see upgrading my laptop, and even what kind of compromises I might see if I give up my dedicated 1060 and am waiting to purchase an eGPU, or am working away from home, etc.
From what I can tell, newer (~10th gen) Intel CPUs are a lot faster than my 6700, to the point where even U-series CPUs look better in benchmarks. Being able to bring a lighter laptop around is very appealing to me, and I’m heavily considering that if I really would be seeing (even a minor) improvement in CPU performance.
It’s hard for me to tell if moving up to 32GB of memory would make much of a difference. It seems like Windows does a pretty good job of managing its memory, but I’m pretty irresponsible with leaving tabs open and not closing programs when I go off and do something else or decide to play a game. I don’t mind paying premium for it, and/or don’t mind using an upgrade kit myself.
The GPU does seem to be the system’s bottleneck when I’m rendering. But, again, I’m not too worried about render times. There are effects in Premiere that use the GPU either during application or during playback, and those can be pretty rough. (They’re not very common in my projects, though, so far.) I’ve done some editing on a friend’s desktop with a 2070 and even that can get bogged down, so I’m not sure anything could remedy that on mobile hardware.