Best Laptop CPU for Handbrake Encoding

[Walkamo]

Hi Everyone,

First post here on these forums...

I am looking to buy a new laptop, mainly for transcoding HD video. I have decided I want to get a laptop. I am currently looking at an HP that has a Intel i7 2630QM 2gHz (Sandy Bridge). HP has them for $899 right now with 8gb Ram and a Blu-ray writer..

Am I going to see huge result differences between this CPU and a i5 SandyBridge?

Or should I be looking at something all together different?

Thanks,

Walkamo

[TedJ]

I would take the i7 over the i5 even if the i5 has a higher clock speed for one reason... more cores. Testing has found that x264 scales cleanly up to 6 cores.

[onneeye]

I would get an extended warranty with that. Get a good laptop cooler. I fried my CPU on my laptop using handbrake. Got it fixed under warranty.

[Walkamo]

Thanks for the input....

Now I need to decide on the new Sandy Bridge i7's are a i7 740 model...

Lots of previous i7 deals are showing up...

Walkamo

[tlindgren]

Now I need to decide on the new Sandy Bridge i7's are a i7 740 model...
Lots of previous i7 deals are showing up...

Core i7-2630QM mentioned before vs a Core i7-740QM?

Video coding is highly threaded so the most relevant figure is probably the base speed and the turbo speed with 3-4 cores active assuming a decent cooling system. Cooling can be an issue on laptops but if we assume similar cooling on the two machines any cooling issues it would probably help the 2630QM.

Core i7-740QM: Base 1.73 GHz, 3-4 core Turbo: 1.86 GHz
Core i7-940XM Extreme: Base 2.13 Ghz, 3-4 core Turbo: 2.4 GHz
Core i7-2630QM: Base 2.0 Ghz, 3-4 core Turbo: 2.6 GHz!

The 2630QM should also get more done per clock than the older i7's too, my guess is that the 2630QM will kick the 740QM by between 40% and 65% at h.264 encoding so the i7-740QM better either be a lot cheaper or have some other things you want (like a gaming graphics card for example).

Heck, it looks like the 2630QM should at least equal and more likely significantly beat the i7-940XM Extreme, probably just barely at base clock but at all turbo levels it's both higher clocked and gets more done per clock. That's Intel previous laptop top CPU that they sell for more than $1000 for the CPU alone probably getting beaten by the slowest available Sandy Bridge laptop quad core CPU.

Both Intel's desktop and laptop CPUs got a significant kick with Sandy Bridge but the kick was larger on the laptop side (but the desktop kick was nothing to sneeze at).

Obviously the higher-end mobile Sandy Bridge i7's will further extend the lead, though not by that much, I see that both base and turbo clocks for 3-4 cores are approximately 10%, 15% and 25% faster for 2720QM, 2820QM and the 2920XM, but I don't see any yet and I do expect them to ask for a big premium on them, especially the 2920XM Extreme which probably cost the same $1000+ per CPU as the 940XM.

[dooferorg]

I would suggest *against* using a laptop for transcoding movies, as mentioned above the cooling is often insufficient to sustain a high processor load for a long time. Most laptops are designed for brief periods/bursts of activity. You're going to be running this thing for HOURS to transcode HD video. I have my file/media server's quad core Q9400 running on this task but I have a huge heatsink with a 120mm fan on it and it keeps it at 39/40C while transcoding DVD rips. Thanks to some PHP I wrote for automating things I keep it busy transcoding and just feed in discs periodically. I don't find I'm CPU-bound since it just gets on with itself and moves on to the next encoding task, so although the new Core i7 Sandy Bridges do far better (up to twice the encoding FPS) it's not THAT important IMHO. Normally the computer is done with encoding and I need to get the next discs read in so I'm the bottleneck at this point. On the contrary my T61 laptop with a 2.6Ghz 45nm T9500 gets warm pretty fast (55C +) even with the fan speed up to full when I've tested some HandBrake options on it. For my money I'd have a desktop machine churn away in the background doing the transcoding work and a smaller/lighter laptop for 'laptop work', i.e. relatively light duty.

[thompson]

I would suggest *against* using a laptop for transcoding movies, as mentioned above the cooling is often insufficient to sustain a high processor load for a long time. Most laptops are designed for brief periods/bursts of activity. You're going to be running this thing for HOURS to transcode HD video.

Poorly designed and engineered laptops, maybe. My Macbook Pro has run for 24 hours + of straight encoding without blinking.

[david3]

For what it's worth, I use a laptop as my main machine with an external monitor and keyboard, mostly for power efficiency reasons. And I use it for HandBrake encoding and let it encode all night, and sometimes part of the day, too.

So far I haven't had any problems. I keep it propped up so it can get adequate airflow underneath the unit, and the fan kicks into high gear.

I don't doubt some laptops may suffer problems if you push the cpu hard, but personally I'd consider a laptop like that defective.

[TedJ]

My Macbook Pro has run for 24 hours + of straight encoding without blinking.

I ran a DNA population analysis on my 2007 Macbook Pro for six weeks.

[mduell]

If a laptop is going to overheat and crash, it will probably happen within 5 minutes. If it can make it 5 minutes, everything is up to max temp and it will go for years.

[dooferorg]

Yea, I guess I've not had my laptops die from heat (I do like my Thinkpads), it just makes me a bit 'twitchy' to see the heat levels rise I guess. That's awesome if people are happy running HandBrake on their laptops and it's doing well. I suppose it comes down to personal preference. Just my 2 cents.