Actually there is a point. Buy it now and take a slight performance hit in non-multithreaded apps, then he won't have to pay again later to upgrade to a midrange chip.
Is camtasia studio even MULTITHREADED? If it's not, you're wasting your money on the dual core cpus and would benefit much more from a regular athlon 64. Make sure the software you plan to use is mulitthreaded before buying any hardware.
There are threaded apps and there are THREADED apps. Lots of apps spin up a few extra threads to run different app components on, like running the UI on one thread, and a database connector on another one and the rest of the app on the main thread.
That type of concurrency is simple, and intended only to prevent "blocking" behavior. Blocking behavior is what happens, for example, when: you write a simple app that runs everything on a single thread and then you: click File, Save, and, because you're saving to a really slow flash drive, it takes 4mins to save a tiny file. During that time, the entire app UI is "blocked" from receiving and processing messages from windows, like instructions to redraw itself when you open another window on top of it.
I know you've seen apps like this that get trails and remainders of other windows imprinted on them until they're done thinking. That's because the UI and the "save" function are running on the same thread, and they "take turns" (in effect) listening for user or windows input. Many apps run the UI on the main thread (the default thread you get when any process starts) and only deliberately create new threads when performing a potentially "blocking" behavior like accessing anything over a network connection or performing potentially lengthy IO routines like reading/writing big files.
Again, that type of threading is relatively easy because you aren't trying to take advantage of multiple processors (and all of the issues regarding synchronization of variables across CPUs and shit like that), you're just trying to exploit the host operating system's ability to pre-emptively multitask and schedule threads.
Your whole OS won't freeze because some jerk opens a huge file from a slow flash drive right? Of course not. It just services hardware interrupts from the device and its driver(s) when asked to, and continues to run the rest of the processes and threads that are in the queue, including your UI thread.
The next most difficult type of concurrency is when you need to split a large data processing task across as many CPUs as possible. Unlike the "blocking" problem i just illustrated, your task won't benefit at all by being split onto just one CPU. A good example is the codec for any type of encryption of compression algorithm, be it network communication (SSL), video (DIVX/XVID/MPEG), or audio (MP3/WMA/AAC). These tasks tend to have distinct start and end points, so the algorithm can identify a "load" to split into threads when more than one cpu is available, which nearly always divides the task time by the number of available CPUs.
One thing that dual cpu configurations are really good at is servicing hardware interrupts. So doing things like burning CDs and scanning and ripping videos to disk works a lot better when you have more than one cpu or core.
Could save a little bit by getting the Acer AL2416WDUltraSharp 2407WFP 24-inch Widescreen Flat Panel LCD Monitor (Gives me all the realastate that I need for work and play.) $750
Drop to an eVGA Geforce 7900GT KO and get a DX 10 card when they come out in 6 months or so. No sense in wasting over $500 on a video card you're going to only use for a short time.GeForce 7950 GX2 $500
Swap these for a couple of Seagate's 7200.10 320GB SATA2 drives.2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB Hard Drive
Serial ATA-300, 7,200 RPM, 16MB (Raid 0) x2= $160
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 <--- Provides Kentsfield support as well.I'm on the fence when it comes to which Mobo, Mem, Case and PSU to get especially with Core 2 Duo being so new.
DO NOT get 4GB of ram until Vista arrives. 4GB won't be recognized by or fully utilized by any 32bit operating system, and XP x64 is a waste of time. Stick with this Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 for now. Pick up another set if you end up switching to Vista down the road.Ram? 4 gigs would do me more than perfect.
Antec Truepower 550WPowerSupply? Don't want to skimp here. Want quality and something that allows for additional components to be added in the future. More HD's probably for a Raid 5 array.
Antec P180Case? I want a Full Tower case with plenty of room. Nothing fancy.
The P180 should have some fans, but if you want to add more (provided there is room), pick up a couple of theseExtra Case Fans? Not sure if I will need those or not. More than likely I will. I've heard that the vid card above gets pretty hot when under load for long periods.
He'd be better off with the X1600 XT for video encoding.