Thanks for the review. I've been dying to actually put my workstation to the test. I spent about a week going back/forth with Matrox tech support to find out why Premiere was crashing after I downloaded the latest updates to CS3 as well as their RT.X2 software. After that it was mostly syncing all the green screen layers, seeing how garbage mattes tax my system, and trying to find good backgrounds to use.
The final render to .avi, I would say, took about 20-30 minutes. I know it's not high art or anything, but I learned a ton throughout the entire process - especially what effects put a strain on system resources - and I can't wait to get back at it. The key was finally getting my software/driver updates up to speed, as well as some system maintenance, so Premiere wouldn't crash every 5 minutes or so.