Hey all!

I am in the process of building my second editing system. I am on a $1500 budget and already have my software.(after effects,cinisteam,EditDV) After meeting a few guys that used to build hrdcore editing systems for film, they suggested investing in the video card and the ram. I also have my old capture card which I think will surfice. I am thinking about 512 DDR ram and the NVIDIA Geforce 4600 card. Also 2 80 gig HDs and sound blaser platnumn audio set-up.(front inputs) Now, What about a motherboard combo? I have seen some dual motherboards without chips for around $200. Is it worth it? Which ones? IE, brand and model? Or should I just go with a single processor system and not worry about possible conflicts? I would hate to blow the cash and have conflicts. Also, should I build the system or does someone know of one ready to go?

Preferred is if you let someone built. They are then 100%
responsible to get you a working editing system! Especially
if you go down the two precessor route. Personally I would
invest in the following order:

0. Windows 2000 professional (98 or ME is too unstable,
not everything works yet under XP.. so for me 2K is
the thing to use. XP might be good if everything you
have is compatible)
1. CPU speed
2. harddisk space available
3. dual monitor (or more) setup
4. memory (at least 256... preferred 512 or more.. I have 768)

You'll have to research the compatabilites of your capture card. If you want the most bang for your buck, I'd go with a Tyan Dual AMD board.

Go Tyan duallie...but use the s2460, if you can. the s2466 is designed for server work and the 64bit/66Mhz PCI slots are unuseable by most pci cards. I was running 512 Mb RAM until one day I tried to render a particular clip made of individual bitmaps(an animation). My RAM rqmts were driven up to 1 Gig and it crashed. After upgrading to 1 gig RAM, I've had no probs. I would strongly recommend against the Creative line of soundcards. They are resource hogs and their drivers are poorly written. It's true, the audigy is an awesome card, but, beware. I use a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and have NO problems with system freezes or scratchy audio. A lot of systems with SB audigy cards tend to BSOD a lot.

Too true Bill,

I've found the SB cards to be great by themselves but they don't work too well with some motherboard and capture card combos

I have the SB Audigy Platinum w/ breakout box, and have had no problems at all since updating the motherboard bios. I have the Abit KG7 Raid and 1800+ AMD.

The thing I like the most about this SB card is the front access. I plug my Korg D12 straight in and record. It has optical I/O, firewire, and 1/4" stereo jacks, everything I wanted and more. It could use XLR I/O, but then that would be getting picky.

Just make sure your tower has enough drive bays.

Big towers are better anyway. Especially for the things we do.
I usually have two CD/DVD drives in my tower, a couple of
harddisks, bunch of cards.... Very nice to have space available
to lay all the cabling, allow the heat to pass (cramped space
is never good for heat) and room for expansion....

I'm sure if they added XLR's to the Audigy, then they would turn around and say it's a piece of 'PRO' gear and slap another $1000 on the price.