Buy or Build a Video/Multimedia Workstation

Article Forward (teaser)

Buy or Build a Pro Video Editing / Multimedia Workstation, a four part series.
by the Tech-edge E-zine, Tech Lab staff

This is a very ambitious review and how-to article for us because it will entail testing and reviewing two new off-the-shelf, albeit BTO (built to order) computers, and our custom building of three “do-it-yourself” computers.

The two new BTO systems will be an Apple G4 1.42GHz Dual Processor Power PC and a Gateway Custom BTO system based upon the new Intel Xeon 3.06GHz Pentium-4.

Because not every professional or serious video/multimedia producer can afford an off-the-shelf BTO system, we decided to see if we could produce a more cost effective “do-it-yourself” system for the budding professional and the full time professional.

For the Mac power user, we took the old Mac G4-400MHz that will be upgraded in the How-to Upgrade your G4 PowerPC desktop article and we'll further tailor it for serious video editing and multimedia production. We will see how the new Mac G4 1.42GHz DP cracks up against a revitalized four-generation-old G4.

On the Windows side (or it could be Linux too), we’re building up two killer “do-it-yourself” systems, both based on venerable AMD Athlon processors. One will run a more budget based Athlon XP2400+ with a MSI mother board, and the other Giant Killer system will run the new Barton technology AMD Athlon XP3400+ processor with an ASUS A7N8X mother board. We’d like to thank the sponsors of this article series, who contributed the hardware that allowed us to build systems you could make a living on. AMD, Antec, ASUS, Corsair D-Link, Belkin, RAM, NVIDIA, Maxtor, Western Digital, Viking Components, Logitech, Verbatim, Sharp, Princeton, Toshiba, Iomega, Bare Bones Kit Cases, High Power, Adobe, ULead and Roxio. Also, Gateway and Apple for the off-the-shelf BTO systems.

This article series will start publication on May 30th, but as a big tease we just had to show you the hot components that will be making up the Giant Killer AMD Athlon XP3400+ system. As we write this, the system is already up and running and it has been benchmarked again an Intel Xeon Hyperthread 3.2 GHz Pentium-4, and you have to come back for the very surprising results.

Corsair's XMS PC3200 CL2 Very Fast DDR RAM