Help me beef up my PC
 

Here's what I have:

Windows XP (Sp2)
AMD 8450 Triple Core 2.0 Ghz
2GB RAM

250GB Hard-drive
200GB Hard-drive
External 300GB Hard-drive

ETA: I'm looking at speeding up the editing process/rendering process with mostly 7D files converted with Neoscene.

Nvidia Gforce 9600 GT

I work with Vegas 9/Premier CS3/After Effects CS3 and none of these will run Magic Bullet Looks (Which is bugging me but I can't get an answer from Red Giant). Mojo works, but not even Quick Looks works. Finesse is fine, but I would like to work out of Vegas (It's a bit easier right now than CS3 and AE) I'd be happy to invest in a new NLE if there's a trial on one before purchase.

I am thinking of buying my wife a Mac JUST so I can use Final Cut Pro on it. She's not that tech savvy and I'm constantly having to clean up her computer. I'm very much a Windows person but new to the NLE and HD video industry. I know what I need and don't need for photography, but not cinematography. Hope someone can help a bit.

Maybe this will help: Adobe Forums: How to get the best from a PC? Some...

The most cost effective way to boost performance considerably, will be to drop a 3.4GHz Phenom II X4 in your computer (or a 3.0GHz Phenom II X4, if your motherboard will only support a 95 watt CPU). You can get them for under $200 nowadays, from Newegg.

It would probably be a good idea to bump ram up to 4GB also.

I thought that XP only recognized up to 2GB of RAM...anything else gets lost?

Anyone using Windows 7 yet?

Microsoft Windows XP 32 bit will recognize up to 3,668,396 KB or 3.6 GB for short.
I know because my machine has 8 GB installed, but XP 32 bit sees only the first 3.6 GB.

I have disk images of both 32 bit and 64 bit OS's.
That's why I have as much memory as I do.

Actually, XP sees the first 4 GB, but can only use 3.x GB of that space, because some is needed for internal use and housekeeping. That is why it reports seeing only 3.6 GB.

If you can not reuse the existing mobo and memory, I would stay far away from anything AMD and only choose Intel. Much better performance.

I bought 2 more GB of RAM now it shows up as
Physical Memory
Total 3326 MB

I also bought the AMD X4 945 Quad-core 3.0GHz...speedy