Hi, I have the P4P800E delux Motherboard, and am in the process of buying components and I'm gathering as much info as possible on what is the best for what I am using the comuter for. I will be using an Intel CPU. I don't do much gaming but I am an engineer and use autocad frequently. one thing I do very often is convert home movies from my VHSc tapes to DVD's and it does seem to be pretty hard on the computer I have now. Would a high-end vid card speed the moviemaking up any or is that mostly the CPU's job? I am poor so I dont really want to work crazy overtime to buy an expensive vid card if i dont really need it. actually, I do have an older PCI video card, i think its like 64mb maybe 128, should I just use that?

wow, ive been looking at vid cards, and some of the postings here for recommendations and I just get more confused. One that seems to be popular is a 9800 pro, but when i go to newegg or tigerdirect and search 9800 pro, i get results anywhere from $130 to $200. how can there be such a difference within the same series?

The CPU does most of the work when you convert stuff. Since you also use autocad a lot, try and buy a dual core processor, it'll speed things up a whole lot. You don't need one of the fancy videos cards for what you're talking about, but you don't want a cheapo one either. Go for a midrange card, the 9800pro is a good choice in my opinion.

Thanks, ill probably do just that. If everything goes ok with building this one, I may just sell everything but the kitchen sink on ebay and try my hand at building a really really fast comp. problem with doing that is 18 months after i finish building, its already outdated lol