[medgen]

To set this up, here is a little background:

I had planned on upgrading my home system in about 6 mos. to 1 year. At that time I would have enough to buy buy the HQ video editing system that I really want. Unfortunately, I have been forced to renew early so I am trying to find a compromise that is both inexpensive but will meet some of my basic needs.

The computer will be used primarily for downloading, web-surfing and some light MS-office type applications. This system also serves as my TV when I am using the exercise equipment that is also stuffed into the office. Primarily for that reason, but also to save on buying a new video card, I will be installing my ATI AIW 9600XT card on the new system.

The final thing that I really want it to do is some light-duty video editing. Although many find it hard to believe, I actually get a pretty good quality home video product using Pinnacle Studio 9.0 (I know that Premiere, etc. is great but that is the future for me). I do this once a year, distilling about 20 hours of raw home video footage into about an hour of video set to music. Although quite an intensive task, it occurs just once/year so it is not the MAJOR use for this computer (and up to now I have been doing it on my dell X300 -- Pentium M 1.2 with 640 ram and 40gb HD).

One thing I'm really not into in gaming of any sort, so it will not be used in that capacity.

So, for $600 Canadian (note that systems are slightly more expensive up here), here is what I am proposing:

AMD athalon 64 3200+
Asus A8V 8X AGP DDR400 Audio GB-LAN SATA
Corsair VS1G400C3 Value Select 1GB DDR400 PC3200
Seagate Barracuda 7200 SATAII
LG 16X DVD +/-RW dual layer
Generic 350W tower

In particular, I am interested about comments in two areas:

1. I have heard that the AIW cards may not be very compatible with the A8V motherboards. Does anyone expect that this will be an issue? (OK, I know that I am going to be told they are garbage, but that is one things I am not going to change right now).

2. I can't quite seem to find out whether this motherboard will support SATAII. If not, will probably get the Barracuda 200GB SATA drive.

3. Any general comments about the component makes. The place I am going with has (for about the same price), OCZ, Samsung and Kingston RAM, WD and Maxtor hard drives, and all kinds of DVD writers (although I figure they are all about the same these days.)

Thanks for any and all comments.

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It probably wont support it i would imagane but i would have to check, i wouldnt get an asus there current boards are flaky and the older ones like that had a much worse rep. Else it looks allright what core is the CPU?

[warriorscot]

It probably wont support it i would imagane but i would have to check, i wouldnt get an asus there current boards are flaky and the older ones like that had a much worse rep. Else it looks allright what core is the CPU?

[medgen]

Well, after some further consideration, I have changed my mind. Although only slight, it seems that P4 has the edge in the video rendering department, so I am going to go with that. So, here is my new setup:

Pentium P4 630
Corsair VS1G400C3 Value Select 1GB DDR400 PC3200
Seagate 200 GB Barracuda 7200 SATA
LG 16X DVD +/-RW dual layer
Generic 350W tower

The main issue I am having now is the MOBO. I see that you do not like ASUS, although my only other options at this particular store that support the socket 775 and AGP8X are ASUS and ASRock. Since I don't really want to go with ASRock, my ASUS options are:

Asus P5S800-VM socket 775 SIS 661FX video DDR 400 (SIS chipset)
or
Asus P5VD1-X (Via chipset)

Do you have any comments about which is better and whether either is more likely to be happy with my ATI AIW 9600XT card.

One final note -- I would be willing to go a little farther afield to purchase a better Mobo, but I would like to hear some suggestions of a decent mid?-range (i.e. $60-$90 US dollars) board that supports 8X AGP (and, of course, is compatible with my AIW)

[warriorscot]

Well its only the amd asus mobos that are bad, intels are ok.

Intel have a slight edge on video edting but its not huge, and when you factor in the cheaper price of AMD if the system is not a permanent fixture then i would go for AMD as they are better value for money and means you can get a way with slightly lesser cooling and psu.