ok, building a new workstation, and keeping my current computer as a toy... just for games and tweaking. i need a completely dedicated work-only box, and i'm planning on getting a p4 3.06 w/ HT. i'm really an amd guy (i.e. doesn't know anything about late-model intel), but i might be doing vid editing in the near future, and i hear intel does a little better with that. most of my work is web design and stuff, so the usual adobe & macromedia stuff. i assume the hammer is still several months off, i haven't heard anything new on its release. going to be shuffling some hardware from my current setup to the new box, to get more speed out of the toy box, as well.
now, what i really need help on is 2 things. first, the memory. i like this kingston stuff pretty well, it seems to be pretty fast, so i'd like to keep it, and migrate it to the workstation (upgrading to corsair xms in the game system). would i notice a huge difference between this and that crazy rdram or whatever? i see no real use to discard this stuff, and none of my other servers or anything use ddr
and, i need a good motherboard recommendation. 8x agp, onboard NIC is fine (using one now, seems to work well), not a big fan of onboard sound but hard not to get that anymore. i need firewire and usb 2.0, but the firewire doesn't _have_ to be on the machine. if the firewire is not on board, probably going to need like 5-6 pci slots. and that would be assuming NIC is onboard.
also, i haven't really been able to find one, but i'd really like to get a dual board. it's not a huge deal, but it'd be nice. i stress my machine fairly hard with a lot of programs.
this machine will not be overclocked, i just need reliability. features aren't a _huge_ deal, i don't need raid on board or anything like that. just looking for good reliable performance for a reasonable price. thanks.