will be ordering a pc for video editing purposes only. a bit of internet too. i was set on the following set up:

INTEL PENTIUM IV 2.4 GHz 533MHz
ASUS P4B533-E/L/1294 INTEL 845E
MUSHKIN 512MB 2700 BLUE
MATROX G550 32MB
WD 40GB 7200 rpm 8mb buffer
WD 80GB 7200 rpm 8mb buffer

the salesman at the store i was about to buy it from suggested i go with the newer intel 865PE chip on the motherboard and said the INTEL 865 PERL ROCK LAKE is a good and stable board around the same price as the asus board i had intended to buy.

also he suggested KINGSTON or GeIL for memory and not MUSHKIN.

the reason i went for the asus board is because i've read good things about it on forums such as this one. so it's a proven board that works well with NLE.

the salesman says: new chip is faster, asus has bad service if something should go wrong, intel boards are extremely stable since they are the ones who create the technology in the first place and that intel is not so popular because people just don't like intel. sort of like a hate bill gates thing.

what do you guys think? should i go with my original plan, or does he have a point or two?

one more question: does the choice of motherboard effect my choice of memory?

i'll be placing the order right after the weekend.
thanks

He has a couple of points:new chip is faster, asus has bad service if something should go wrong, intel boards are extremely stableI'd go with that, more or lessintel is not so popular because people just don't like intelProbably more likely that other manufacturers have more inspiring performance and specification IMO! :-)

But I do agree that a i865 or i875 chipset would be better than i845. For a start, these newer chipsets support 800MHz CPUs, as well as the faster IDE (SATA) hard disks. This may or may not be an issue for you.

The choice of mobo will affect your choice of memory in terms of memory type, but not manufacturer.

thanks nigel for the quick response. i see your points on going with the i865 boards, but what about this particular intel board the salesguy is reccommending i take? couldn't find any reviews on it on the internet, and basically, i haven't come across anyone who owned an intel manufactured board. everyone has asus, abit, gigabyte, msi, etc.

I would suggest looking at the NewEgg website which has user ratings on the boards. I also like Asus but Asus has had some bad problems with boards crashing and rebooting. It might pay to read up on the asus user forum and listen to the problems they post at the Asus website. I wanted a built in IEEE 1394 also but they seemed to have problems. Also, Newegg is a great place to shop for computer parts, they are rated tops. It seems that no matter what review you read the big magazines and tech websites never seem to admit to the major problems. Do yourself a favor and read the customer feedback at Newegg. simply do a search using "asus p4b533" and when the product description comes up, the customer reviews are located on a link at the bottom of each item description. Be careful with asus, they have recently begun to have major problems with motherboards !!!!!

I've gone off Asus. Used to swear by them, but now at them. I currently use Abit, which perform well and are generally cheaper. I have no personal experience of Intel so cannot comment. Best bet might be to see if they've been run in tests by Tom's Hardware or Anandtech etc.

Just one other thought. It appears, here at least, that 800MHz CPUs are cheaper than 533MHz CPUs at the same chip clock speed. Another reason for going with the latest chips.

Adi

Your might want to read this review:
http://www.mbreview.com/perl.php

Looks OK, but see what you think.

The new Asus P4 800 motherboards are again having bad ratings from users. You would think that Asus would QA and solve the problem, this is unlike the old Asus, They must have changed cooks!!

I came very close to getting one of those boards when I thought that Abit wouldn't get a Canterwood board out here in the near future.

But the IC7's been available in the UK for a few weeks, and there are signs that it'll be emerging here in Switzerland soon. I'm glad I waited.

thanks for all the replies. nigel, cool linc. i read the review, seems ok. i think i'll go for the intel board with the newer chips.

any thoughts on memory?

I really liek the Kingston HyperX memeory, it is fast CL2 memory and I use it on my ASUS P4PE and my Gigabyte i875P boards. newegg.com has excellent pricing on the memory.

thanks keith. but i've already ordered.
thanks everyone. i'll let you know how things work once i receive the pc and get it running.