hardware options for new workstation

Okay, let me apologize in advance, I know this is not really an Inventor NG,
but my questions are AutoCAD specific.

I have finally talked the boss into buying a new workstation, to be used
primarily for :

1. Running AutoCAD 2006 and Inventor.
2. Running Photoshop and processing several large (100-200 Mb files) at
once.
3. Digital video editing with Adobe Premiere (.avi files up to about 4 or 5
Gb before, being greatly compressed down into something someone can actually
use).

The budget is no more than $1,500, so that rules out a Xeon processor. I am
leaning towards a Pentium D 945 which is a dual core 3.4 GHz processor, and
going with 2 Gb of DDR 533 RAM.

First question - I suspect that any decent video card, such as an ATI X600
SE 128 Mb PCIe card will run the AutoCAD and Inventor fine. Anyone using
this card with Inventor, or have any thoughts on this? (I've alrady checked
the Inventor Forums, with little luck).

Second question - would I be wiser to cut the processor back to say 2.8 GHz,
and go to 4 Gb of RAM? (about a trade off in cost.

Thanks in advance for any opinions.

babygrand

 

Forget Intel in that price range. Go with AMD x2. Intel's Core 2 is
great but since it is so new, is going to be premium priced. The first
generation of Core chips is only on Mac's and laptops as far as I know,
and the Pentium D is a quick fix of the hopeless Pentium 4 that was
produced to be able to claim that Intel had dual core when AMD released
their dual core.