Intel Q6600/Xeon/Mac Pro, for HD editing/rendering?

[Wile_E]

It's time to upgrade and this time I'd like to build a good enough system that will let me edit and render HD quickly. Do you guys think one LGA775 Q6600 is fast enough? I'll be using Sony Vegas Pro 8. Dual Intel Xeon and LGA771 boards are interesting, but they require expensive FB-DIMM's. Do I need dual CPU for 1080p editing? I've been told by a few people that I should just switch entirely to Mac and buy a new Mac Pro.

[rallynavvie]

You don't need one of the dual-socket systems but if you do a lot of rendering work then you may want to consider them as an option. Just keep in mind that you're going to be paying at least double for a system that will only increase your productivity by 50% at most.

I didn't really think FB-DIMM was that expensive compared to other ECC memory. It's certainly cheaper than its predecessor, RDRAM

I think the new Intel 5100 chipset doesn't require FB-DIMMs. There were rumors of an upcoming workstation platform for the new Core-based Xeons that didn't require FB-DIMMs and would be a better version of the Skulltrail platform. You may want to watch the progression there. At least the Xeons themselves are much cheaper than they used to be.

A Mac Pro is essentially one of those Xeon platforms in a nice, expensive, proprietary package. I love OSX but I think I'd rather build my own system for less cost and run XP on it.

[Soopafresh]

I've got some Mac Pros at work. 4-Cores and 8 Cores. The ram is remarkably inexpensive, if you get it from Newegg - $160 for 4GB

But yes, you can build a system for considerably less.

[rallynavvie]

I've got some Mac Pros at work. 4-Cores and 8 Cores. The ram is remarkably inexpensive, if you get it from Newegg - $160 for 4GB

Again because it's fully buffered DIMMs like the Core-based Xeon platforms require. I still don't see $160 for 4GB as expensive