Greetings all,
I have recently been put in charge of creating a DVD from 36 hours of mini-DV tape (and seperated audio). I am in the process of getting Adobe Premier Pro 2.0, but know that it won't run worth a damn on my Athlon 1700. So I need to upgrade. I just upgraded my wife's PC (Asrock 939 with a Athlon 64 3400, and a Nvidea 6800GT). Had to buy it all local in about two hours because my wife had a deadline to meet that evening. The reason that's relevant is that now I can splurge a bit.
I've always been a buy the best option available, and if need be, wait a bit to do it. I'm not a 'have to have the latest stuff' guy, but like to buy solid tech. Am I crazy to buy a dual CPU MB (Asus K8N-DL), slap a Dual Core Opterion 265 in it, and a gig (or two) of memory. My reasoning is that I can buy now, leave a socket open, and in a year, put another 265 and memory in it. That leaves me with a quad core system and some (limited) room for upgrade. I know it's registered DDR, and not DDR-2, but the prices of DDR-2 don't seem to be moving anywere, and with FB-DIMM's on the horizon (not to mention DDR-3), I don't see the reason to need it. Again, I lean towards the 940 socket as it's a server socket, and AMD will still support it for some time (I hope). I've got a fairly solid Power Supply (Antec), so I think I can support the wattage. PCI Express card I'll have to buy, but that's no biggie.
The other option would be to buy an Intel (ugg), 975(?) board that has been validated for Conroe. Slap a Pentium D 820 in it and wait for Conroe to come out in a 9 months to a year (I'm being realistic here). Granted it's not dual CPU, but it's upgrade path is a bit better than the "soon to be replaced" Socket 940. And if the performance numbers are as good as the tech sites say they are, I wouldn't be missing all that much performance.
Socket F is around the corner, as is AM2. But I suspect the 'new' system stuff for these boards isn't that great, and the prices on the older stuff will drop to some degree. Besides, even though I like AMD a great deal, I like the CPU war revitalizing and know that Intel might be the best way to go right now. X2 I don't consider an option given that the 939 socket is known to be dead.
Other than the video edit stuff, I'm a fairly normal user (including some gaming). I work IT for the Post office, so my time on the PC at home isn't all that much. When I do use it, it's mostly SQL/PHP/Java work for the nonprofits I volunteer for. Given that I'll have Adobe Premier Pro, I'll probably use it to do some more DVD work, for said non-profits.
I appreciate you thoughts and I thank you in advance.
Dave
I have recently been put in charge of creating a DVD from 36 hours of mini-DV tape (and seperated audio). I am in the process of getting Adobe Premier Pro 2.0, but know that it won't run worth a damn on my Athlon 1700. So I need to upgrade. I just upgraded my wife's PC (Asrock 939 with a Athlon 64 3400, and a Nvidea 6800GT). Had to buy it all local in about two hours because my wife had a deadline to meet that evening. The reason that's relevant is that now I can splurge a bit.
I've always been a buy the best option available, and if need be, wait a bit to do it. I'm not a 'have to have the latest stuff' guy, but like to buy solid tech. Am I crazy to buy a dual CPU MB (Asus K8N-DL), slap a Dual Core Opterion 265 in it, and a gig (or two) of memory. My reasoning is that I can buy now, leave a socket open, and in a year, put another 265 and memory in it. That leaves me with a quad core system and some (limited) room for upgrade. I know it's registered DDR, and not DDR-2, but the prices of DDR-2 don't seem to be moving anywere, and with FB-DIMM's on the horizon (not to mention DDR-3), I don't see the reason to need it. Again, I lean towards the 940 socket as it's a server socket, and AMD will still support it for some time (I hope). I've got a fairly solid Power Supply (Antec), so I think I can support the wattage. PCI Express card I'll have to buy, but that's no biggie.
The other option would be to buy an Intel (ugg), 975(?) board that has been validated for Conroe. Slap a Pentium D 820 in it and wait for Conroe to come out in a 9 months to a year (I'm being realistic here). Granted it's not dual CPU, but it's upgrade path is a bit better than the "soon to be replaced" Socket 940. And if the performance numbers are as good as the tech sites say they are, I wouldn't be missing all that much performance.
Socket F is around the corner, as is AM2. But I suspect the 'new' system stuff for these boards isn't that great, and the prices on the older stuff will drop to some degree. Besides, even though I like AMD a great deal, I like the CPU war revitalizing and know that Intel might be the best way to go right now. X2 I don't consider an option given that the 939 socket is known to be dead.
Other than the video edit stuff, I'm a fairly normal user (including some gaming). I work IT for the Post office, so my time on the PC at home isn't all that much. When I do use it, it's mostly SQL/PHP/Java work for the nonprofits I volunteer for. Given that I'll have Adobe Premier Pro, I'll probably use it to do some more DVD work, for said non-profits.
I appreciate you thoughts and I thank you in advance.
Dave