Dual core vs Quad core for a Filmmaker?

Question

Hi, I'm a 14 year-old filmmaker who really wants their next computer to be a mac mini. I am obviously on a tight budget being 14, so I was thinking just buying the standard dual-core processor. But for a filmmaker like myself, is it worth the extra $200 for my heavy-duty video-editing applications? I would use a mixture of Apple Motion 5, and the video-effects program Hitfilm Ultimate. I know quad is faster, but is it worth it for me?
Thanks.

Answer 1

"Hyperthreading" is the key. Hyper-threading enables each execution unit (or core, if you will) to process two threads (tasks) simultaneously.  It can do this because not every instruction takes only a single instruction cycle.  Sometimes instructions have to wait for a read from memory, which can take many clock cycles.  Sometimes multiple instructions can be performed at once -- for example, a floating point addition and an integer multiplication, as long as both instructions already have their operands in registers and store the results in different registers.  Hyper-threading enables each processor to handle multiple tasks by allowing one task to work while the other is waiting for a result, or allowing both instructions to be completed at the same time because they use non-conflicting resources.
So, two "hyperthreaded" cores work as fast as four without hyperthreading, or the difference in speed is so negligible, you wouldn't notice it.  Since the Mac Mini Core i7 is also hyperthreaded, it works as well as dual quad cores, so if you need inudstry standard speed, then the Core i7 would be your best choice.
As I said though, I can take 1080p video from my Canon Vixia, and edit it with OnLocation or Premiere Pro, and render it with barely a drain on my processor cores (2 or 4). So far, the biggest vid file I've done was about 250Mb, which was about a ten minute shoot. If you're going to work with 2Gb and up, then I'd definitely go with the Core i7 and max the RAM out to 16Gb.