No AMD love for Avid Liquid? Need advice...

[Alex Lucas]

Hey guys, I am looking to retrofit my existing computer to work with the new Avid Liquid and making a pro editing suite out of it, and the specs on the software state that the machine needs a PCI-e motherboard, an Intel Chip, and PCI-e Video Card, as well as WinXP Pro.

Well, my machine is AMD 64, AGP Video, and SATA100. It's a game box. It doesn't do no Intel.

Soooo, will it work if I nab a firewire card and buy the software?

Does anyone do any editing on AMD, and if they do, would I be better served getting a whole new Intel PCI-e mobo combo, or just getting firewire cards and duking it out? Am I going to have to go and get a whole new barebones kit to rebuild my machine?

Also, if anyone has any advice regarding motherboard firewire vs. firewire cards, whether external firewire drives are better than external USB2 drives for editing, and a good in/out video card that I won't blow a gasket when I see the price.

I will be eternally grateful for any advice, because right now, I am having a tough time finding answers to this.

[Glenn Chan]

Also, if anyone has any advice regarding motherboard firewire vs. firewire cards, whether external firewire drives are better than external USB2 drives for editing, and a good in/out video card that I won't blow a gasket when I see the price.

Motherboard firewire should be fine. In rare cases, there may be incompatibility problems... which means you can just pickup the right firewire card ($25?) and solve that.

Firewire drives: Generally better than USB2.
However, sometimes firewire devices don't share a single firewire bus well. So you change how they are all daisy-chained / connected, or you put them on different firewire buses (i.e. onto another firewire card).
I would avoid the prolific chipset firewire drives.

In/out video card: You don't need one??? I'm not sure what you mean by this though.

2- The Avid Liquid specs at http://www.avid.com/products/liquid/specs.asp
tell a different story than yours...