Dual Xeon or AMD 64?
 

guys i need to built a new PC. I am hoping that my new G5 will help me get through the rough days of editing HDV with FCP5 so i dont want a top notch PC but i want something that will last me a few years and will help me edit DV smoothly with no prob as well as running programs like After Effects and such whith plugins supported only on windows.
the question is should i go with dual xeon or amd 64.
i am considering dual channel ram about 1 gig- 300gig of raid sata 1 storage - a getforce video card about 128mgb plus other stuff.
my budget is about $950-1000
what is your suggestions?

Keep in mind that not all software (or hardware, ie drivers) work yet under
Windows XP 64 bit. Hugh, for example, is having problems with Sony Vegas
on a 64 bit machine. Make sure that everything you need to run works under
64 bit or run 32 bit Windows XP on the 64 bit CPU at first.

Just so you know....

yea i heard about this, then what is the point of this 64 bit and if i go with amd 64 how can i run 32 bit stuff on it untill everything becomes 64bit?
should i set from before?

Okay, I see that you have a G5, which should be good enough for just about everything related to video. Why the PC?

But in any case, I would recommend holding off for a couple of months because Dual cores are coming out mainstream by that time. By that time you should have some more money to spend on a computer. Also, I don't think you can go for top of the line on $1000, so I think your best bet would be something like this:

-AMD64 based Socket 939 motherboard (study to make sure which motherboard supports dual cores for future upgrade)
- AMD64 3200+ to 4000+ depending on budget
- 1gb of DDR3200 SDRAM (2x 512mb sticks or one single 1gb stick for future upgrade)
- Single 250-400gb+ HDD, minimum of 8mb cache
- Geforce FX/ATI Radeon PCI Express card (don't go AGP, it's dead)
- Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card or M-Audio card
- DVD-R drive (dual layer ain't so great)

Xeons are too expensive for what you get ATM, they aren't even dual core 64-bit yet. Just go with AMD64 as Windows 64 should be out by the end of the year.

Actually, dual-core systems are available now from Dell starting at surprisingly reasonable prices. I just went to their web site and configured a "Dell Precision 380" with a 2.8 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB of DDR2 memory starting at $859. According to David Newman's post in another thread here, he's finding that one Intel dual core processor can outperform two single-core Xeons, so the system described above may be comparable to dual Xeon workstations costing roughly twice as much. Among other things, this should be a good system for rendering finished HDV projects to the Windows Media HD format, which is currently one of the most practical solutions for distributing HD output.

Dual-Core does seem to be a cost effective way of obtaining Dual-Processor speeds from one CPU. I'm upgrading my PC to Dual-Core but yet undecided wether I should go to AMD 4800+ or the Intel Pentium EE 840. Just waiting to she some benchmarking of the two.