Help me choose- Which new pc for HDV editing.
 

I have an immediate need to pick up a faster pc for HDV video editing
to fit into my already exisiting standard definition digital video
post-production suite incl. Premiere Pro 1.5 & Encore and soon Aspect HD from Cineform.
I like Dell's and have great experience with the three I own, so am looking at the Dell Outlet for the best
and cheapest basic dual core system with Win XP SP2 to get me started quickly. Most of the available inventory
look like XPS 400 models, and some XPS 600 models which are more expensive.

My question- What is the significant differences between a Dual core
Pentium D 820, 830 and 840 models versus the Pentium D at the same
clock speed respectively with the 920, 930, and 940 designations? Is
it worth paying more for the latter to do HDV editing? Anything else I should watch out for?

Dual Opteron...
 

You could take a look at the AMD opteron dual-core machines - the processors in the 200 series.

Right now AMD is the most bang for the buck, have a look at the price graphs...

http://www.pricescan.com/graphs/grap...&ItemNo=168770

AMD slashed prices a few months ago... I would recommend a system based on a AMD Opteron dual-core today.

Don't know if you build your computers yourself, but if you do - find a motherboard with an on-board RAID SATA controller and put two 300GB disks in RAID0 configuration - this will give you more or less double datarate from the drives (but only 300GB space..) - this is a very good thing when editing HDV. And then one normal boot/system disk, and then you are up and running with a very good HDV edit station.

Good luck
/magnus

I appreciate the comment and suggestions, but I am pretty happy with Intels. I own three older Dells now and it is really much cheaper and easier to buy a heavily discounted pre-built dual core system for $700-$1000 at the Dell outlet than switch to a new vendor and architecture or waste a lot of time to research how to custom build a machine. I work at a breakneck pace and I have released many professional DVDs edited and authored from DV footage on a three year old Dell P4, so I know that an off the shelf dual-core Dell pc will work fine for me as part of my suite.

I built a computer last year based on a Pentium D 830 processor and it works okay for HDV editing with Canopus Edius Pro, but I wish it had a little more horsepower. Take a look at the following speed test results and see if they help you any...

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.ht...=67&model2=202

Nice chart. Makes me happy that I got a great deal at the Dell Outlet today on a refurbed Pentium D 930 w/ a Gb of RAM and a dual layer DVD burner for $829 after tax and shipping.