Originally Posted by
cs19
rip and burn stuff will definitely do better with a multi-core processor. This is getting over my head, but aren't more programs trying to dump more graphics-intensive stuff onto graphics cards? If you're just ripping and burning its no big deal, but if your converting video files see how your GPU stacks up.
The speed of your CPU can make quite a lot of difference when you are converting/transcoding video. As far as I know, the graphics card/GPU plays little part in recoding/converting video performance, it is all about raw CPU power.
www.tomshardware.com has benchmarks comparing different processors for different applications.
They show a that computer with a Core 2 duo E8400 will typically convert/transcode video anything between 1.5x to 2x times faster than a computer with Pentium 4 3mhz processor (D830). It makes a lot less difference to some other applications though.
Also, a dual core processor generally makes the whole computer much more responsive when you are multi-tasking, especially if you are running processor intensive applications in the background.