Stock performance of the E2160 is roughly the same as an AMD 4400 or 4800, when looking at video encoding.
If you're considering a Tier One pc from the likes of Dell, HP, Gateway, etc, then there really isn't much to choose between the two CPU's performance wise. AMD are pretty competitive with Intel in the "value" sector.
If you're the sort to build your own pc, however, you can take advantadge of the huge overclocking ability of the E2160. It can reportedly be overclocked over 60% using stock cooling, and without increasing the voltage. In that overclocked condition, it's quicker at encoding than even the significantly more expensive AMD 5000.
It used to be the case that overclocking was just for hard-core enthusiasts - but the C2d chips have such good thermals that they can be OC'd without the addition of expensive cooling fans and huge heatsinks. Some people might worry about the longevity of an OC'd cpu - but in my experience, the CPU will become obsolete before you need to worry about it going up in smoke.
I've seen quite a few mentions of Video Studio not being well optimised for AMD dual core cpu's. Whilst I don't know if that's the case, I can say that VS11+ seems to make pretty good use of the 1.8Ghz Core 2 Duo T2400 cpu in my laptop, as the png below shows. It's a Task Manager screenshot made whilst VS11+ was rendering a MiniDV avi file to mpeg-2.
Bear in mind, of course, that there's more to video editing than cpu speed. As Steve suggested, most current pc's are fine for video editing. You can make do with the humblest integrated graphics and only moderate amounts of RAM - though I must admit my experience is with standard definition only.
, probably as it was ready for replacing. I'm therefore searching for a new one and wondered on the best (low end processor) for video editing with ulead 11+. I'm choosing between:
Or are they both so basic, they're much of a muchness?