need a new PC

[rallynavvie]

No, I'm not getting rid of my beloved dual Athlon system, just getting it a big brother. I was wondering if for multimedia would I be better off with a single 3.0GHz P4 with the massive FSB or should I go for a dual Athlon 2600+ system? The incendiary differences between the processors does not interest me as I'm no slouch in the cooling department. I just want something that will spit through software MPEG encoding fast as sin as well as allow for me to mate a good hardware card in it (like the Canopus DV Storm 2 Plus) for editing/production. I never had any troubles with the Tyan system board other than how finicky it is about RAM so I'd actually like to stick with what I know if it's all the same. I was looking at a Tyan Thunder 2468 or 2469 with built-in SCSI and serial ATA support. Anyone have one of these or have experiences with it? I've read some great reviews for them.

[mrtristan]

If you have the money, you might want to consider buying a dual G4 macintosh. I almost bought one, but my replacement parts for this machine came in time.

[rallynavvie]

D'oh, I've already got a dual 800MHz G4
I've had the Mac for a while now, in fact I had it before any of my PCs. I haven't found a DVD authoring app for it that I like so I really only use it for Quicktime authoring (it still seems much faster than the PC for this) and graphic design/layout stuff. Oh I also use it for internet access because nobody writes viruses for the Mac much anymore.

I'm looking for another PC so I can basically transfer what's on the current one over to the new one. That's another concern of mine, does having the same program and the same serial on two different machines in my home OK since I'm the only one who ever uses them and therfore can only really use one at a time? At the same time I'm just a home user so I don't think the software police will be knocking at my door, but it's still nice to know.

[tgpo]

I haven't found a DVD authoring app for it that I like

You don't like iDVD or DVD Studio Pro?

[rallynavvie]

Machine didn't come with those and I can't afford them when purchasing all the software and hardware for the PC. Is there a cheap software encoder to rival TMPGEnc for the Mac? With dual Athlon 2600s someone said you can use a software encoder to encode faster than realtime. That would be something to see, though I'm still looking at getting a good Canopus system.

[tgpo]

Machine didn't come with those and I can't afford them

iDVD is free.

There are tons of great encoder, it just depends on what you are wanting the final product to be. ffmpegX is an example of an excellent encoder.