Well...You could go with an Asus CU4VX-D..dual PIII board with what is considered to be the most stable VIaChipset out there....just make sure you get the latest 4in1 driver patch for it...AMD is good as well and I think there's a board by MSI thats supposed to be good. Cant remember the board name right now..check out 2cpu.com for that!! they do hardware reviews for dual processor systems
OS..go Win2k..XP is still in the debugging stage..Win2k is rock solid...check out my website for my Win2k optimization guide..it makes your system a powerful rocking machine!!
Plus Win2k is dual proc support where 98 is not..XP is on the Professional version but not the Home version..
Now..I will put in my two cents worth since I have dealt with Motu quite extensively..yes..they are primarily a Mac based company and really dont give a hoot about the PC side of things....their tech support really bites so your best bet is to come here and join in on my computing forum for help...I've helped Motu resolve sooo many PC issues its not funny!!
Other considerations...if you are doing primarily video...get SCSI drives..better throughput that way..also you might want to go with a Dual monitor AGP card for that as well...once you work in dual monitor setup you will never want to go back to single monitors again!!!
I hope that answers most of your questions as best as possible!!!
Opus

Opus,
Thanks for your reply.

I was aware of the need for the pro version of 2K or XP, but thanks for pointing that out, cuz I could see that really screwing someone over. I had already intended to drop in a dual head card.

Do you know anyone running a 2408MKII with that MOBO? (Or another PCI324 MOTU product?)

Surfing over to your site now...

Queue

Yes...over at the Nuendo forum there are couple of people using it..they love it too..altho most people are tending to go with the RME cards..which I would love to do one of these days but I dont have any AD converters to go into the digital ins of the RME card yet...but who knows...perks of being tech support for Apogee will pay off soon I'm sure!! woo woo woo!!!
Opus

Queue,

I have a MOTU 2408 mkII with an ABIT VP6 board, 2x PIII 933Mhz processors, 1 Gb of PC133 CAS 2 RAM, Matrox G450 video card, Plextor CDRW, 3x 30Gb ATA 100 HDDs (1 for OS and programs, 2 in a RAID 0 array for audio files), an FDD, and Win2K. I've been running NUENDO and WAVES GOLD BUNDLE on the system for about 9 months now. It is very stable. When I first set it up there were some difficulties with the Matrox drivers, but as soon as I got the latest ones from their site the problem was solved. Just make sure you have the latest BIOS and drivers for the 2408, on-board raid controller , matrox video card, and also the service packs for Win2K.

egcc,
That's exactly the kind of info I'm looking for. Thanks a million.

Queue