Quote:
Originally Posted by stickyfingerz
As big as your budget can afford. As much ram as your os will support. As big of a video card as you can afford.  Btw they do have videocards that take over part of the video encoding processing now. Look into the new Nvidia cards and software that handles that. Its currently on my upgrade "list". |
Max memory on your motherboard is going to be the limiting factor, Sticky. XP and Vista 64 will support 128gb of memory, but most motherboards support 8gb maximum - until you get up into the server variety (Then the maximum is 16gb and 32gb) which increases cost in several other respects as well as requiring registered ECC memory.
So the short answer is mostly likely going to be 8gb of memory, and a 64 bit OS, and the Q9450 processor which can be found for $299.
Video card doesn't affect rendering ability, only video playback, and a mega-high-end video card is typically a waste for this application. Anything modern in the $300 range is going to play HD video just as good as a $700 card.