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I have a friend who is looking to do video editing, and is looking at a Core i7 system. Originally the whole plan was to run off the IGP (not a gamer), but just today he came to me with a special need for 3 monitors. I figured the best way to do this would be a passively cooled HD6670 for eyefinity which should work great. Now my question is the following. He never wants to overclock, and if the 6670 is faster than vs the 2600k's quicksync than I would tell him to drop down to the 2600. Reason being to save a few dollars in light of the HD2000 vs HD3000 not making any difference. Basically, what is better at doing video editing/encoding the HD6670 or the Quicksync on a i7 2600k? Thanks for anyone's' input.

Quick Sync, by a LOT.

TwistedKestrel wrote:

Quick Sync, by a LOT.

Thank you for your reply. Could you be more specific about the gains that could be seen?

I don't know the difference between the 6670 and quick sync, but there is little difference between the 3000 and 2000 igp

You're talking twice as fast or better with Quick-Sync. You'll also see generally better quality. Have a quick read through the couple pages on Intel Quick-Sync in the article linked below

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/8

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the- ... 0-tested/9

Obviously the advantage here is not for the editing process itself, but for the final render ... depending on what your render target is. For hardware accelerated transcoding/compression, Quick Sync is unbeatable in speed and quality. If the quality of that isn't good enough, than the HD6670 doesn't even come into play - he will be doing it by CPU only.

Does that help?

Yes, Good reply..

DPete27 wrote:

You're talking twice as fast or better with Quick-Sync. You'll also see generally better quality. Have a quick read through the couple pages on Intel Quick-Sync in the article linked below

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/8

While it's true that Quicksync is faster, the article says that Radeon GPUs produced better quality images in 2 out of 3 cases, and in the third case the choice was blurrier image for Quicksync versus sharper image but somewhat muted colours for Radeon. So your point about better picture quality is not quite correct.

It should also be noted that the video editing software in question must specifically support Quick Sync. Quick Sync support requires the use of a custom intel API. intel's site has a list of video editing tools that provide support for Quick Sync. (It may not be an exhaustive/regularly updated list, though.)

Palek wrote:

It should also be noted that the video editing software in question must specifically support Quick Sync. Quick Sync support requires the use of a custom intel API. intel's site has a list of video editing tools that provide support for Quick Sync. (It may not be an exhaustive/regularly updated list, though.)

Yes, very important, I forgot to mention that. By the way, here is another article from tomshardware that delves deeper into transcoding/image quality using quick-sync, AMD app, and Nivida Cuda. Its probably the best article you'll find on the subject.
Their conclusion, it really comes down to which software you use paired with your hardware acceleration of choice. I highly suggest reading through it. In the end, if you want the best image quality, you'll have to keep encoding on the cpu only without any acceleration. (that also takes the longest though) In the end, I still say that quick sync being the fastest is your best choice as long as you pick a program that supports and works well with it.