Processor Help for HDV editing system

[Todd Mathews]

I wasn't able to find this question addressed in the forums and appoligize if it is redundant. Just bought a Canon XH-AL. Of course I do not have the pc power to do anything with the footage other than play it back on a HD projector. Looks great but I need to edit out much footage. It appears HP has cut the price on their workstation class pc's about 500 dollars (xw8400) and I feel Dell will do the same on their Precision 690. I have not decided on the software as of yet but lets assume Vegas or Premiere for now. If I am building the pc from the CPU up where do I start? So many choices.

1. dual Xenon 5130 2.0GHz
2. single quad Xenon E5320 1.86 Ghz with the intent to purchase a second chip when funds become available
3. or a gaming/home class machine with something like an Intel 2 Duo E6600?

Will one of these choices have a significant perfomance boost over another?
I looked at the mac pro which uses the xenon chips and were actually cheaper than the pc's by a pretty good margin, spec'd out equally. I will assume, since the mac uses it, it most be good for the video apps??

For what it's worth.. I have purchases 1 TB of esata external drives (2x500) for about $280 (buy.com). Will have 1 TB+ internal storage (3 drives, still can't decide on raid vs non-raid) 2 GB ram to start. Video card comes with basic nvidia quadro. Don't know if that is good or bad? Main concern is the cpu though. Everything else is easy to fix. Thanks in advance...

[Steven Gotz]

If you are planning on moving up to a AJA XENA card or something like it, get a real workstation. Otherwise, I am happy editing HDV using the Cineform codec in a dual core system. (E6800)