I am pretty sure about this, but I thought I'd get a reply from some experts first, just to justify my stance.

I intend to build a system for a company which makes falconry videos.

Current spec:

AMD Athlon 64bit 3400+ 754pin/1Mb L2cache Retail Boxed with 3 Year Warranty CPU
£300
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=58432

MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R SKT 754 K8T800 8x AGP GB LAN 1394,S-ATA RAID 6CH Sound - £90
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=52178

1.5GB DDR Kingston PC3200 RAM CL2 - £185 for 1GB + £85 for 512mb<basically 3 x 512mb sticks>
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=50358

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=52788

Western Digital WD2500JD 250GB 8mb Cache 7200rpm Serial ATA - OEM - £150
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=50033

DVD Burner – Dual R/RW Plextor 8x DVD DUAL R/RW IDE BLACK BURNER - Retail Box -£110
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=52651

Nvidia GeForce FX 5950 256mb DDR, VIVO - £290
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=59666


Chieftec BX-01Extreme Black Atx Case With No PSU - £35
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=55641

PSU – Qtec 550W - £25
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=34825

Chic Office Keyboard PS/2 Black - £4.63
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=49648

Chic 1330 Optical Mouse £3.88
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=42130

Total: £1388.51 including VAT

We already have monitors for it.

Anyway, our other technician seems to think that Athlon 64s haven't been tested with Avid, Adobe Premiere and Adobe AfterEffects <not sure about the spellings, heh, I don't work with the programs>.

I am pretty damn sure they have and have proven to be just as good as Intel's offerings, although at a lower price.

Am I right?

He believes that a Pentium 4 is a better bet and although I wouldn't go against him if money wasn't an issue, it is. The idea is not to blow over £600 on an extreme edition P4 that will perform only marginally better.

We want something very fast, but paying loads extra for only small performance increases seems totally pointless.

Opinions?

I've used both Premiere 6.5 and After Effects 5.5 on my Athlon 1800+ system and they work fine, if that helps.