Editing HDV isn't quite that processor intensive especially using the intermediate Cineform codec, so that's not where I feel a speed pinch. It's the encoding to the multiple final formats and sizes that takes forever and ties up the machine for 10+ hours to do it. It helps to have separate and external firewire hard drives that one can easily swap and plug in to different workstations so that way one can be capturing or editing a new scene on one hard drive and one computer while encoding on another external hard drive and another pc. I have individual workstations for hdv editing and hdv encoding and yet another separate one for standard definition editing and tape mastering transferring stills, photo retouching and other duties.

i'm satisfied with an AMD Sempron 2800+ (2GHz), no OC, but a 700MHz Duron would do the same job for me

Computer here at work is a P4 2.8 w/ 512 MB :(

At home I'm running an E6400 w/ 2gig ram

Dual-Core, Dual-Xeon with 6GB EEC2 Ram; Got it right before the quad core announcement... :(

I don't know about your Mobo, but I could just switch my 5130 Xeons to quadcores if I wanted to...not that I have any need to.

centrino 1.77mhz I think it is