BD Ripper (3D Plus) Best System

[WallySchwarz]

What is the best combination of CPU and GPU for encoding videos to M4V/MP4 format?

Will a Xeon be much better than an i7?

Which graphics card will provide the best bang?

[Nik_Simpson]

What is the best combination of CPU and GPU for encoding videos to M4V/MP4 format?

Will a Xeon be much better than an i7?

Which graphics card will provide the best bang?

The graphics engine will do most of the heavy lifting, so Xeon won't make much difference. Bang for buck wise, you can't do much better than a Core i7 with integrated graphics using Intel QuickSync, at 9500mbits which is pretty high resolution, my systems regularly see >100 frames/sec (about 4x realtime) and in some cases I've seen rates close to 200 frames/sec