CS5 x64 and Mercury Playback Engine
 

It looks like CS5 will be 64 bit only and will require 12GB ram as the min. Adobe suggests 24GB ram.
DAVTechTable - Sneak Peek at the New Adobe Mercury Playback Engine Technology | Adobe TV

Holy @#$%

WOWOWOWOWOWOW

I want!!!

David,

Keep in mind this demo was done on a HP Z800 with dual W5590's, 24 Gb memory and a nVidia Quadro 4800 card. I don't know yet what the disk setup is, but hope to get that info shortly, as well as the benchmark results from this system.

I think it'll run just fine with less then that. I don't believe that he said CS5 will require 12GB of RAM, but it will help...and if you want to take advantage of the new playback engine, more RAM will be helpful.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Production Premium: Accelerate your HD workflows
"For optimal performance, we recommend a minimum of 12GB of RAM."

Pretty much what I have been yelling at CS4 for the past year.

I have expressed some initial thoughts on CS5 and MPE. It may be of interest: Adobe Forums: Thinking aloud about CS5

Do the CS5 requirements preclude usage on today's laptops right out of the gate?

It seems unlikely that Adobe wants to exclude that target market, but it seems likely that laptop users will not benefit from MPE nor from the move to 64 bits if they don't have the hardware and that may well be the case for most current laptops.

My laptop is already x64. All I need to do is install the x64 OS and I am good. I had been waiting 2 years to get some x64 drivers for this tascam mixer I have been using. Finally they released them a few months back.

What laptop will meet the hardware/memory requirements of CS5?

No need for RT.X2?
 

I have CS3, and am going to ugrade to the CS5 when it comes out. I currently am editing SD only, but have the EX1/3 on my purchase list for 2010. With that I was looking at adding the RT.X2 to my system. With the Mercury engine, it looks like I can simply get the NVidea card (and more memory) and get the faster processing from there. Does the RT.X2 provide any other benefit then to PP than speed?

This is also probably a stupid question, but am I right in assuming that this Mercury engine will also have the same speed affect on AE as well?

The Matrox RT.X2 has four serious advantages IMO:

1. It costs a bundle (makes you popular with the Financial Director).
2. It seriously messes up stability and causes regular hangs/errors etc (makes for serious headaches for you and snide remarks from the Financial Director).
3. It precludes using standard PC's, only Matrox approved and outdated systems (leaving you wishing for a better system).
4. It can be thrown in the garbage can when CS5 comes out due to incompatibilities (causing another snipe remark from the Financial Director).

One might argue that these are not advantages, but rather disadvantages.

First of all Bill, before you take Harm's comments seriously, the RT.X2 card is an HDV accelerator, and unlike the original posting at the top, WILL NOT resolve any AVCHD or other proprietary codec issues...

If you're working with HDV, then yes, the RT.X2 card is the way to go..But since you're using (planning to get) the Sony camera, it's not necessary..Choose another route.
If i'm not mistaken, Sony's codec on the SxS cards edit pretty smoothly on a modern system...