card for video editing HD/SD

I am building a system for video editing and need advice on buying a video card for HD/SD. I use Adobe CS3. My needs are mostly video editing with some work (like titling on After Effects). I am not into 3D Special Effects or Animation. I compared an AMD AM2 system with an Intel Core2 Quad. But given the comparison between the two on Toms Hardware (for Premiere 2 encoding) AM2 would apparently take double the time. The cost diff between the two was about £80 (AMD £380. Intel £460). So I think I'll go for the Intel build. This is what the final system will look like:

For your criticism.

However I am not sure what graphics card to buy and any suggestions are most welcome as I am not sure what would be reasonable for video editing (HD/SD). I realise I don't need the Quadro types 3D rendering graphics card as I am not doing any animation. Am I right in my assumption? As of now I only use a bit of Adobe After Effects for titling and some other effects at the most and I foresee that to be my needs for at least a year.

• Zotac 8500GT 512MB DDR2 DVI VGA TV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.
• Belkin IDE Single Ribbon Cable 18"
• Belkin Serial ATA 2.0 7-pin Cable (Yellow) 18"
• Hitachi 250GB Hard Drive SATA II 7200RPM 8MB Cache - OEM
• Speeze (EE514B7) Speeze Intel P4 775 cooler - Ball bearing with push pins for easy motherboard mounting
• Extra Value Pst700-it1 Thermal Compound Silver Grease Injection Tube
• Extra Value 80mm Blue LED Case Fan
• Extra Value Gold 750W Silent PSU - 12cm Fan, 20+4pin, 2x SATA, 1x PCI-E
• Casecom 6630 Black Midi Tower Case With Front Panel USB2.0/Audio - No PSU
• Crucial 4GB Kit (2x2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL6 Lifetime Warranty
• ASUS P5B-VM SE iG965 Socket 775 Socket onboard VGA 6 Channel Audio mATX motherboard
• Plexus Wireless 54Mbps PCI Adapter
• Digimate L2041W 20" TFT Monitor 1680x1050 8ms Multimedia VGA 3 years Warranty
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Energy Efficient 95W edition Socket 775 (2.40GHz) G0 Stepping L2 8MB Cache OEM Processor

Cheers

You are correct that you needn't a Quadro FX or FireGL video card; the only thing they specialize in that you can't get from other cards is raytracing.

As for the CPU choice, I would confirm that the Intel Core2Quad is a good choice; for editing and production, pretty much nothing can beat them.

As for what video card you SHOULD get... I'm not entirely positive here. Obviously, you'll want one that can handle your encoding and decoding of high-definition video quite well. I'd say that as such, you'd want a minimum of a Radeon HD 2400 series card; as I understand, while nVidia's cards hold a bit of an edge in gaming, they actually trail a little behind in terms of video handling.