[bella]

Matty,

I do not have any experience at all with AMD but I read a lot on this site and do not think that the brand of cpu is going to make a lot of difference in processing video, otherwise you would have heard of it here.
I am a Pentium fan because they seem to be very reliable although they run a bit hot. Having said that, I saw the new E6300 at work at my friends place and it was running at 32 Celsius which is ideal for a HTCP but unfortunately I was far from impressed with the speed performance of this processor.

You could save some money by going for a PCI mobo and still get a cheapo videocard instead of going for a PCIe mobo and onboard video. I am running a 9250FX on my main rig and it works fantastic with the new ATI drivers.