Rate My Proposed Setup, PLEASE!!!

[boofer]

Hello. I want to transform my families countless hours of home movies to DVD. So, I have done a great deal of research and have come up with a machine for your scrutiny.

This will be the third computer that I have built. My first computer was based on an AMD/VIA cpu-chipset combination and was primarily used for gaming. I have elected to go with the P4 and an Intel based motherboard for stability and peace of mind.

So here it is:

ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
Intel P4 3.0GHz(800MHz FSB)
1024MB Corsair TWINX1024-3200C2
3xWestern Digital Raptor 36GB SATA (1 on Intel SATA for OS/apps and 2 on the Promise RAID controller for video editing)
ATI Radeon 9800Pro 128MB DDR
Pioneer A06 DVD Writer changed from Plextor 708A
Canopus ADVC-50 Analog/Digital Converter
Mitsumi Floppy Drive
Koolance PC2-601 Case (water-cooled)
Koolance CPU-200G Gold Plated Cooler
Koolance Hard Drive Cooling Block
Koolance Gold Chipset Cooler (for the Radeon)
Enermax EG465P-AX (FMC)
NEC MultiSync FE750 (17”)
Westell 2010 External ADSL Modem
Windows XP Professional

I will eventually get a 100GB+ hard drive(s) for archiving. Until then, I plan on doing a lot of trial runs to work out the kinks.

The reason for the water-cooled case is unique to my situation. I have an enclosed spot on my desk for the computer with no venting. So, the door has to remain open anytime I use the computer and it tends to get in to everyone’s way; especially my two year old son. I am surprised that the door is still affixed to the desk. I want to keep this configuration and might install some sort of exhaust fan at the most in the side of the compartment.

I am currently using Windows 98SE. I choose to upgrade to XP due to the ability to use the NTFS file system and it is more compatible (than Windows 2k) with older programs like some of my daughters Disney games. I neglected to say that this computer will also be our mainstay for games and other day-to-day chores.

The monitor is the one I am currently using, but I would not rule out something in the 19” range. 19” is as far as I could go due to price and space.

I included the Canopus ADVC-50 as my choice for video input for two reasons. 1) At this time all I need is to be able to convert analog data in to digital data. 2) If I am correct, it is better to perform more intensive editing on the “raw” somewhat uncompressed data as opposed to the MPEG2 data.

I have not included any other software other than the OS. I want to give the software that accompanies the hardware a shot first. This is another subject entirely. Right now I am interested in only the hardware.

So, roll up your sleeves and let me have it. I can take a shot.

[rallynavvie]

Save yourself some money and get rid of that burner. Just get a Pioneer unit like the 106. You're likely not going to need that 8x speed, not to mention the media is cheaper. Take that extra $100 and get a 19" monitor.

I wouldn't worry too much about the RAID array, the SATA drives will be enough and it'll give you more flexibility with swapping files around 3 drives as opposed to two. Maybe get a good UPS like the Cyberpower 1500AVR so that you don't have voltage fluctuations affecting your captures, though that can be less of an issue with the Canopus products.

Looks pretty good otherwise. Why the floppy drive?

[boofer]

Thanks Rally. The reason for my interest in the Plextor is the fact that I have used them (CDRWs) in the other two computers that I have built and I like them. But, I will give your recommendation some serious thought. I do not want to give my family coasters: we're talking about a lot of important memories. As far as the RAID, I was thinking that it would help with the actual input of the video as it is converted. Otherwise, I was considering a single 74GB SATA 10,000rpm Raptor (just came out) in addition to the 36GB one for the OS/apps and no RAID. But two 36GB Raptors are cheaper than the single 74GB.

I knew someone would catch the floppy thing. I could not help but laugh. I still have some files that I keep backups on floppy; things like work history, resumes. Plus, I can't imagine a computer without one.

Thanks once again for your input. I will take your advice in to consideration.

[gmatov]

I've never heard anything so silly as buying 3 36 gig SATA drives. SATA is SUPPOSED to have 150 meg transfer rate. It does not, as yet. ATA 133 has a supposed 133meg transfer rate, and at burst, does so.

RAID has been discussed here so many times, and so many have said they tried it and got rid of it that I don't know why anyone brings it up..

I'd sooner go with a couple 160 gig drives than a 250+, as if one goes, you lose half your converts, if 1 250 goes, you lose everything. You'll buy 2 160s for less than a 250 today.

Floppy is because sometimes you need a boot disk.. You wanna boot from CD, be my guest. Mebbe so, mebbe no.

I don't know why I even bother getting into these "Wow, I'm building the bests" anymore. You're gonna let someone with a particular my best coax you into changing to his best, and, for Pete's sake, thank him for showing you the light.

What dumb kids we are growing these days. Can you say, "Gullible"?

Cheers,

George

You reposted after I wrote this. Do me a favor. Take DV, at 13 gig per hour, and divide by 60 for minutes per hour, and again by 60 for 60 seconds per minute,and see what the data rate is when you transfer DV to HDD, or convert from DV to ANY format.. FULL DVD is 8000 Kbps, KiloBITS per second, 8, yes, 8 megabytes per second. And you feel that you need 150 megabytes per second, and RAID, so you don't get a failure to write when you transfer DV or convert. And at the risk of losing all your data if one of those "untested by time" SATA drives fails?

Wow!!! Gotta see what I have in the garage and basement to sell some of you guys. All I have to do is write up a good sales pitch.

[holistic]

A correction

..........FULL DVD is 8000 Kbps, KiloBITS per second, 8, yes, 8 megabytes per second........

DVD cannot have a video stream that exceeds ~10Mb (megabits) -- that's around 1.25MB (BYTES) per second.

Therefore 1.25 * 60 seconds * 60 minutes = 4.5 G/BYTES
A one hour of video goes over full disk capacity at max bitrate.

Nice hearing from you again George. Regards holistic

][

[boofer]

Couple of things George.

A. I wrote the post to try and solicit some constructive critisism before I buy anything, not to brag.

B. I am new to the whole video editing scene and I am trying to keep an open mind to minimize the learning pains. Just because one person recommends something does not mean that I am going to do it. I am certainly not gullible and I resent the implication. You do not even know me.

C. Why did you bother replying to my post? Did you feel a need to vent some anger?

D. Please keep your replies objective, not personal. I do not want my post to turn in to a pissing match. Nuff said.

The hard drive thing is something for which I have wrestled. Basically, from what I have read is that I will need a drive for the OS/apps of course. Then, it is preferable to have a drive dedicated to the video and another drive (or two) for mass storage of completed projects if I want to save them.

Thanks.

[gmatov]

Holisstic,

It is near 2 AM here, sorry.

8000kbps is 1000 KBPS, 1 whole megabyte, PER SECOND, so we gotta go to SATA because the vendors, who have nothing to gain by everyone junking, or giving to the kids, their present drives, can sell us the newest and fastest, to do what takes kilobytes per second of data transfer.

Not video. I know we do need a couple megs per second. But, jeez, we gotta have the terapixel vid cards, etc.

Have you noticed how long it has been that the 3.2 gig Intel has been out?
And no faster one. They got a problem? Tough job to get any faster?

AMD is no better. They can tweak to their heart's content, they're stuck at the threshold, also.

So, we jazz up the peripherals and maybe they'll sell.. Not that they're any better, but they do have more money thrown at them as far as advertising goes.

Oh, shit, why do I bother, everybody here wants the best and the newest, even if they couldn't use all the functions of the last version.

Ah, well

Nice to see you back, too, Holistic. You're one of the few who don't fall for the marketing crap.

Cheers,

George

[gmatov]

Boofer,

NO, you do not need a dedicated "capture" drive.

NO, you do not need the fastest and the bestest that there is.. I will grant that if you are buying something today, such as a MoBo, I would buy something fairly new. Not the best, as there is a lot of hullabaloo when a new board or anything else hits the market..

Boy, aren't you glad you are so young ( I assume you are ) that you weren't able to jump all over the Rambus RAM that Intel said was the next great thing. Where is Rambus today?

Hey, I do not know where you are getting the parts for this machine, but I think you are going at it in the wrong way. I can't even say do a search, because the ones who have been here have wound up building a piece of crap..

Buya machine, unless you are REALLY capable,a nd if you get the right type, there will be room for expansion. Add a you learn. Do not just say"What should I buy">

Hey, I do not give a damn what your credentials are, you ask, and give the specs for a dumb setup. And get pissed when someone says you can do better.

Go figure. Maybe I should start agreeing more. Yeah, buy this, oh, yeah, that too!!!

Bullshit, buddy,

George

[boofer]

George,

If you do not have something constructive to say and cannot put it in an objective format, please do not reply to my post any more.

I have built two computers from scratch and bought the parts form reputable vendors. I know what I am doing as far as putting the pieces in the right place.

I have a budget and I am selecting components based upon that budget. Why should I buy a buy a 1GHz P1 when I have the capability to buy a 2+ P4 and so on?

If you have something constructive to say, I will listen. And by the way, leave out the profanity please.

[holistic]

User gmatov persists in starting an argument and uses profane language. It is harming the intent of my original post and contradicts the pupose of this website-DV Dr. Help.
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=186315

- It is "DVDR"help....anyway back to business.

In Georges defense I believe all he is trying to say is For your intended purpose (ie: A/D transfers through the Canopus ADVC-50) the machine you want is overkill

Personally I feel the same way but have since given up on most of these discussions since few people here seem to have a clue and are hell bent on converting shitty divx downloads to "highhquality" (their words) DVD's


In all reality boofer the following facts may assist in your video editing computer.
* DV is ~3.7 Mb/sec
* Uncompressed video can be in the 27+ Mb/sec range
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/6076.htm
Most newer ATA133 drives can do sustained writes in this range for 80% of their capacity.Since you stated you are going the AVDC-50 route a RAID array is total overkill.
* If (again AVDC-50) going DV then the video card is sheer stupidy - not relevent to the DV to MPEG2 process.
* 512 MB RAM has been found by most to be more than adequate.
* Either AMD/Intel CPU's are up to task. I prefer Intel because I overclock.
Since you said you have a "heat issue" then sure go with the P4.
* MPEG2 encoding is straight number crunching so the faster the CPU the faster the work gets done.

Any questions feel free to ask....

][

[freestyler]

Sounds like quite a beast you're planning on building. ATI 9800 Pro is a great card for hard-core gaming, I have a 9700 Pro myself that I bought when they were first released - very stable.

As far as water cooling is concerned, Koolance seems to be one of the top tier manufacturers of such systems - if you know what you're getting into this should solve / protect against any overheating issues if you do in fact plan on doing some heavy overclocking, for anything else it's probably overkill.

You may also want to consider round cables, as these provide for better airflow as opposed to ol' ribbon cabling.

I've heard statements that raptors are "noisy" and "run hot" but I've not been able to prove such statements - maybe ask around or search on the web to see if others are having any issues with them, they look to be pretty good drives on paper, I'd love to try one out (should be getting a few myself soon).

That is a great motherboard, same board I am also looking to buy when money allows (before xmas)

I believe in dedicated capture drives, anyone who doesn't probably doesn't capture very much

You may be aware that Windows is usually always writing to your system drive (be it either page file, etc) and any hiccup will cause dropped frames! I'm sure others on here can support my view as well, it's happened to me plenty so I've become wise to my situation, accordingly.

[gmatov]

Boofer,

I be damned!!!

I try to tell you you are overkilling yourself, and what do I get?

I refresh and see that you have gone to the "Report this post"

You may buy any damned thing you want.

If you have money to throw away, with no greater return than the machines already used here, what have you accopmplished.? When you come back next week and say, "Well, help, I am dropping frames, what can I do", what are you gonna do?

You are going about it all wrong. You see the guys here who say, Oh, yeah, you need at LEAST one gigabyte of RAM, Oh, yeah, you need at least 3 dedicated drives for capture, Oh, yeah, you need at least a 3 gigahertz CPU just to keep up.

What the hell, you wanna spend the bucks and come back for advice, come on back. Most of the guys will talk at you.

I might not, but, what the hell.

Cheers,

George

[gmatov]

Freestyler,

Move your swapfile to another drive and make it a given size. If you have a half gig of RAm,make the swap- file on D:\ 512 meg. Will not screw up your OS drive.

Do not get a sick green when it says you are making a BIG mistake not letting Windows do this for you. Just do it.

I'm so ashamed, I've been reported for profanity, but can't find any. I thought I was a better proofreader than that.

Ah, well,

Cheers,

George

[boofer]

Thank you freestyler and holistic. That is just the sort of info I need.

The Radeon 9800 I have already purchased at BestBuy because it was on sale for $300 with rebate and includes a free copy of Half Life2. And believe it or not, my little girl's games can be fairly intensive even compared to MS Flight Sim. So, I am not chinsing here.

The first time that I looked at at buildng a video editing machine the technology was such that you needed SCSI hard drives and the only DVD burner out was the Pioneer for $5000. But things have come a long way with the newer hard drives, SATA, and such. I am having to relearn much of what I learned in the past.

I am afraid that the only way that I can keep things cool is with water regardless if I overclock. I am hoping that I will not have to cut a hole in my desk for a fan.

I have read about the heat and noise issues with the Raptors. I think that this will be a mute point given my cooling senario and the fact that the entire computer will be in an enclosure. But, I will reconsider the EIDE drive option holistic.

I only mentioned RAID because it sounds good. I have read some horror stories about RAID but dismissed them because I do not have it. If it worked as advertised it should be preferable. And yes I am aware that RAID uses up system resources.

And I cannot help but think that a dedicated video hard drive is a good thing. It does not seem to make sense to put something as sensitive as video that is being input to be put on the same drive as the OS. So, I think that I am fairly set on at least two hard drives, RAID or no RAID.

I only choose the 1GB of RAM because it is not that expensive and it has more of an effect on system performance than processor speed.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the info.

[freestyler]

That's a fine system but it'll cost you - it'll cost you but it should be good and should tide you over for years to come, with the exception of maybe recording speeds going up higher which is probably what made you consider the 8x plextor writer. That video card should hold up for at least 2 years IMO with the current progress of game development (that is a hardcore gaming card btw which I think you're already aware of). We have yet to see Doom 3 and HL 2 (for the most part).

And what's with flaming new users? Just ignore posts if you don't care to respond to them - look at all the 0s next to the author name and respond to those other outcast posters who need all the help they can get (maybe some psychiatric help as well) with copy protecting their copies made from a copy of a copy and putting 5 movies on one disc and keeping the menus

[gmatov]

Boofer,

I really do not want to do this, but you talk like a man with... never mind.

RAM is not the be-all and end-all.

When you hit a point you get to the point of diminishing returns. There are those here who will tell you tat 256 is it, 512 is it, gigs is it.

For Video, RAM is not IT CPU CYCLES is IT. There is no replacement for CPU. Kapish? Not RAID 0, not RAID 1, not RAID 5, not any combination of RAIDs.

Nor is it SATA, or, actually ATA133, the drives were quite capable of writing a capture before they came along..

Oh, geez, why am I talking to a 9 year old girl? Note the way I spelled that you can't call it profanity. Oh, darn!!!

Cheers,

george

[holistic]

A follow up to some statements....

I want to transform my families countless hours of home movies to DVD

Have you considered the 'standalone' units - such as the Panasonic models

...250GB+ hard drive for archiving....

At 13Gb/hour thats a lotta video storage. EVEN more if recompressing to MPEG2. Consider the following : 250Gb drive @ $420 and TWO 120Gb drives @$130. Even by the time you fill the first drive and find you need a second or a third you are saving money AND splitting up the DATA.

...I have an enclosed spot on my desk for the computer with no venting...

Hmm venting ...yep we all must vent. . The idea to make a hole is valid. Do it. ! With water cooling you still need to disipate the radiators heat.

.....2) If I am correct, it is better to perform more intensive editing on the raw data as opposed to the MPEG2 data.

Yes but DV is not "raw" but compressed ~ 5:1 . Still far better to edit in DV(avi)

Another option .... think outside the box....or inside a smaller one.
http://www.shuttle.com/hq/
http://www.sfftech.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=447


][

[boofer]

Holistic,

As a matter of fact I did consider the stand alone DVD recorders. That is primarily why I am here. We have some footage that was transferred from 8mm to VHS and I am hoping that I might be able to clear it up a bit. And just plugging the VCR in to a DVD recorder has it's limitations. Plus, if I do it on a computer I have the flexability to create DVDs in different formats, i.e. +/-R.

I just threw the 250GB hard drive out there as a number. I guess I should of said that I would consider a large drive(s) for archiving. Funny, I would consider two 36GB drives over a larger 74GB drive based on cost than ignore that fact when it came to outright storage. I stand corrected.

The desk compartment is not completely without ventilation, but it does not have any dedicated ventilation. I was afraid that I might be giving the impression that there is no ventilation. I plan to see how things go and do what is necessary.

By the way, something that George said did intrigued me. I have fixed the size of swap file on my computer here. After Windows loads, is the swap file the only file that sees activity?

I almost forgot. I do understand that the "raw" data is compressed somewhat in an AVI file. Is it not better to edit the AVI file than to edit the MPEG2 file?

Thanks!!!

[Faustus]

I use IDE raid with 2 ibm Deskstar 80gbs and love it.

Also I had a PIII 1ghz with 1gb of ram. A 512 died... the system was slower so it does make a difference. I wouldn't personally put more then a gig in a home system though.

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE has different ideas how what exactly goes into a good computer.

gmatov: You did nothing wrong trying to offer advice, what language I saw was very minor, but please try to not be abrasive with your advice, if someone does not agree it doesnt mean he's after you.

[Will Hay]

RAID 0 did nothing for me.
I had x2 Maxtor 80gb D740X's on a controller and lost less frames when I split and used one for storage and the other for capture - formatted before each capture.
I've just invested in an ADVC-100 although my ATI Radeon 64mb ViVo has been a great workhorse, max. 20 lost frames in each hour which is perfect for me.
Sure, you'll get people who can't accept that but hell, I don't have six hours a day to spend tweaking my system.
Only stumbled across this thread as I was recording a computer post in off topic and stumbled across someone complaining about my pal Geo!
I couldn't believe it and had to see it for myself
Will

[lordsmurf]

I operate a P4 1.8, standard fans and cooling, 512 RDRAM, an ATI AIW 7200 card, 512GB of HD (all 7200 IDE/ATA) and a 4x Pioneer 105 and I probably do more than 95% of the people at this forum. I don't need any fancy cooling, fancy drives, fancy RAM, etc.

You can built such a system for about $800 these days.

If you like to spend money, then feel free to go balls-to-the-wall, but you won't have a huge lead over what somebody like myself would experience.

I think the biggest reason I'm fine is because of my Intel P4, my Intel motherboard, my RDRAM and my ATI AIW. The half-terabyte and 4x DVD-R are nice too.

[rhegedus]

@boofer

If cooling and ventilation is as much of a problem as you suggest, then I suggest getting as few hard drives as possible because they can kick out a lot of heat.

However, since you're going to be doing a lot of capturing, you will need a separate HD for the OS and one for capture. Get two large IBM deskstars (say 120Gb each) and partition one of them as 20Gb for the OS and 100Gb for storage and editing. The other 120Gb HD should be left as one large partition for capturing (and editing if necessary).

Since you're going to be capturing as DV at 13Gb and hour, you should have room for about 7 hours on the first drive and just ove 8 hours on the second drive - more than enough to be getting on with.

If the PC will be used purely for capture and editing, you do not need a fancy graphics or sound card. Buy a motherboard with onboard graphics and sound and either save the difference or spend it on some good 4x DVD media, a faster processor or some new hard drives later on when you've sorted out the desk and ventilation issues. Trust me, once you have a PC, monitor, VCR (and maybe portable TV), speakers, printer (for all the lovely case inlays), about a dozen DVD cases lying around and all the cables needed to put it all together, you're going to need a separate room and not just a cramped corner of a desk!

You don't need all that RAM for capturing and probably not even for editing - I've got a gig in my system and can't really say I noticed any difference from when there was just 512Mb in it.

But it's nice to know it's there

[boofer]

Thanks everyone. This is the kind of feedback for which I am looking.

I see that there are as many ways as there are people here to successfully achieve a common goal.

Obviously, one needs more storage than most casual computer users. The configuration of this storage is a matter of personal experience and techniques. He likes this and you like this, but they both work.

The water cooling thing is a different matter entirely and I pobably should not of mentioned it. Regardless of what knid of computer I build it will be water cooled.

I cannot believe that I did not check into the Pioneer drives. Shame on me. Correct me if I am wrong, but Pioneer was the first to produce a PC DVD writer and thus has more experience with building them.

As far as the RAM thing goes I do not plan on using less than 512MB and not more than 1GB. Although video editing and production might not benifit from more RAM there are a lot of programs that do. Just a reminder, I need this computer to be the jack of all trades.

rhegedus, where can I put my floppy drive in all of that? (thanks for the humor)

[rhegedus]

where can I put my floppy drive in all of that?

Floppy? What floppy?

Seriously, both 2K and XP will install from CD (if your motherboard supports it) and there are loads of programs that will allow a system recovery from CD (Norton etc.)

I've got one on my PC, but I've haven't used ot for over a year.

Ditch it!

[boofer]

LOL, I understand. But we have some stuff on floppies and it is convenient for taking the resume to Kinko's. But that is a small thing. I did not know that Norton had integrated a recovery CD into their program. I have a fairly old (2001) version that makes me create about 11 floppies. I plan on getting the 2003 version but did not feel like mentioning it.

[xtreemkareem]

Rats... i bought into the whole stupid RDRAm scheme. Oh well. The thing is my mobo only supports Ultra ATA 100 speeds (2 ATA 100 IDE controllers). will this be enough? What speed HDD would I use in conjugation with it for adequate capture due to the bottleneck effect I'd be getting?

[rhegedus]

Get an IDE card.

[rallynavvie]

it is convenient for taking the resume to Kinko's

Maybe not for much longer. With the new G5s due to ship Q1 2004 and new Dell PCs at about the same time nothing will have an OEM floppy drive there. I think we'll still have the USB floppy drives, which is what I'd suggest you get for your computer; just make sure the BIOS supports booting from its USB devices if you're going to use a floppy as a boot disk.

Getting several smaller HDDs is a cheaper option but then you run into problems with lack of channels and space in your box. Take into consideration power supply demand for the extra drives as well. One 250GB HDD draws less power than 2x 120GB drives and takes up half the space. I'm pretty sure it'll create less heat in the case as well. Get whatever you can afford I guess. Maybe get 2 SATA drives and one 200GB IDE storage drive. For the longest time I only had an 80GB drive and a 200GB drive and never really had any problems with it. I wonder how well those faster SATA drives handle pagefile allocation

How many watts is that PSU? And have you given any thought to a UPS? My house was built 30 years ago and the wiring isn't the greatest in every room. Whenever my lift pump came on it would wig out the computer in my office, not so much from the power drain but because it was giving some sort of feedback on the power for that circuit. A UPS with voltage regulation fixed that until I wired the office on its own circuit. I still have a big UPS on my my encoding machine since sometimes even the slightest brownout causes dropped frames when capturing. This happened more with my Dazzle card, not so much with the Canopus card. I have my box, monitor, capture card, and VCR plugged into the UPS and hardly get dropped frames other than where the tape is bad. It makes me want to get a VTR though

Which brand of 9800 did you get? I love the 9800 cards but some of the off-brand ones aren't that great. A friend built a computer for a coworker of his with a Gigabyte (sp?) 9800 Pro and it failed after only weeks of gaming. May have been a fluke though. The plain ATi branded stuff should be better. Other good gaming card is the GeForceFX 5950. That's looking to be a pretty cool VGA board. I still don't have any troubles with my old Ti4400; it runs Battlefield at 1280x1024x32 with most of the graphics options on without any noticeable framerate hit. A friend has an FX 5200 and gets about the same performance. But since you've already got your card you should be happy with what you got. $300 isn't bad for that card.

[boofer]

Thanks rally. That is some good information.

I am planning on a 465w power supply and have not considered a UPS at this point. I live in a 40+ year old house and with the exception of storms and such I have not had any trouble (kow) with the power in this room. But I will keep your suggestion in mind.

I think that I have decidied to go with an external hard drive (100GB+) or two for storage. Since this drive will not always be needed why power it up and allocate resources everytime we use the computer?

As far as the hard drive situation, that is my biggest delima at this point. I will most certainly stick with at least 512MB RAM and have decided to make a small jump up to a 3.0GHz P4. I like the thought of a smaller (36GB small, that's funny. my old dell had 3.2GB only 2 years ago) drive for the OS/apps and a larger drive or two for the AVI file.

A few questions. I have never messed with Windows XP. I have enjoyed 98SE and I am real familiar with tweaking it, but I still have to format and reload it every few months. From what I have read XP is a little more RAM hungry but does not get garbaged up like 98. Is this true?

I guess that you could call me an old-schooler and find it hard to get away from a floppy drive. It just seems natural to have a floppy drive. But, I will keep it in mind. Before I ever get in to the video stuff I am going to have to become comfortable with XP.

I made sure that I got the bonefied Built By ATI 9800. I know that this is more than neccessary but I mentioned ealier that this computer will still need to be able to game and run other applications in addition to video editing. Funny thing is I built my first machine because my daughter's games were having all kinds of trouble on our old P166 Dell. And I wanted to get away from Dell which is a story in itself.

Thanks for your two cents worth.

[Supreme2k]

How come none of you genius' (genii?) are suggesting a killer Mac G5 system? :P