Building a new system, need input....

[etecnifibre]

I am looking at two different routes. First off, I have a Sony DVD burner and an ATI AIW 8500 128Mb already. What I need to know is which processor would better suit my needs. I will be mainly working with Ulead's Video Studio 7 and Media Studio Pro 7.
I can either go
AMD Athlon XP 3000 (400 FSB)
Gigabyte MB (Dolby 5.1, Dual Channel RAM, 400FSB, 8X AGP)
Corsair TwinX RAM (Probably 512MB to start as it is kind of costly)
OR
Pentium 4 2.8Ghz (533Mhz FSB)
Gigabyte MB with same features as above
Corsair RAM
I really appreciate all the input. I've talked to several people without a really solid answer. Maybe there isn't one.

[MachineMan]

Im also thinking of upgrading my system. I have heard that the pentium encodes faster, but have no proof. Also you might want to consider a mother board with double the EIDE (RAID) ports so you can have more then 4 drives (Hard discs, DVD, CD...)

[andkiich]

If price is not an issue, then I'd go with the Pentium, only because you will benefit from having the faster FSB. Otherwise I've been using AMD chipsets for well over 12 years and really like them. I'm currently running an Athlonxp 1800 in my capture/dvd makin' machine and an Athlonxp 2200 in the web/gamin' machine.

[soundforbjt]

If you do go the Intel route, get the 800FSB Hyperthreading CPU as it's much faster encoding. I built my first Intel after nothing but AMD and could'nt be happier. Encodes are much faster than my XP2400 AMD machine.

I went with a 2.4 800fsb P4 with a gig of Winbond BH-5 ram and it screams. I had it overclocked to 3.2 using the stock cooler.

[etecnifibre]

Found a pretty solid review on Anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1783

[The village idiot]

If money is no problem, I would build a dual P4 XEON machine. But that's just me.