[Jamsan]

So, I've always built gaming machines, and never really looked into photo/video editing machines. The only thing I really know is that they need alot of ram. Anyone have any reccomendations for such a system? The budget will probably be somewhere in the $1000-1500 range. He will be getting dual monitors, so whichever the choice for video card may be, dual monitor support would be great. Thanks guys!

[shrugs*]

Quad G5?

[MaesterB]

Ram and hard drive.

A lot of my customers usually get P4s for editing, with 1 or 2GB of RAM, and at least 300GB of hard drive.

I'm sure an Athlon64 would do just as well.

As for video, if he's going dual screen, a 7600GS or something along those lines should be good.

[funkgab]

a amd dual core should do fine, if you cant get it go with intel, 6600 - 7900 is good enough, as long as his monitors are clear, get as much ram as you can, and get the fastest hd you can, photo/video editing takes up alot of space, so i dont reccomend raptors.

[MaesterB]

Originally Posted by funkgab

a amd dual core should do fine, if you cant get it go with intel, 6600 - 7900 is good enough, as long as his monitors are clear, get as much ram as you can, and get the fastest hd you can, photo/video editing takes up alot of space, so i dont reccomend raptors.

Unless you get a couple of 150GB raptors and go raid 0 with them. That would be freakin' sweet!

[Jamsan]

Would a raptor (74gig) be horrible? I mean, at the most, you'll usually be working with a movie or 2 max at any given time.... and its largest forms, i dont see more than 5-10 gigs being used... Plenty of space in my opinion. Maybe I'll just have him go with a 150gig raptor, and then maybe a 300-500ish gig for a storage drive.

I was thinking a P4 D 930 (3ghz), with a nice solid board/ram (2 gigs), and overclock it a bit. Then maybe either go with a a 7900gt, or skimp on that and go with a 7600gs.. He probably won't game at all, so I think a 7900gt would be overkill. Should he maybe go with a quadro or somethin?

[Undertaker989]

2+ gigs of ram
Raptor HDD (2 of em on a raid0 array if you want the most speed of course)

DUAL PROCESSOR - the most important thing for video editing IMO b/c thats what the encoder uses.

Check out anandtech/HardOCP/Tomshardware guides for content editing systems, or at the very least, dual processor reviews.

ultimate video editing system the way I see it:

-----------------
2 Dual Core Opteron processors
3 gigs of RAM
2 76GB Raptors on a RAID0 array - fpr your video clips ONLY
1 IDE drive for your OS install
videocard with at least 256MB of Video Ram

optional:
1 360gb backup drive
-----------------

So, I'd just nurf that down untill you get into his price range.

[Eps]

From what I've heard, the professionals use LCD monitiors and they never turn them off. Turning them off means minute variances in the color displays previously setup by programs like Adobe Photochop.