advice for my friends computer

I have another question. What specific 3D apps will this person be using? What types of creations does he create? Logos? Video creation? Full-blown 150 million polycount scenes?

I am asking this because, under certain loads, a lackluster video subsystem will even render a quad dual-core Opteron with 16GB of RAM useless since it can't even display the scene he may be working on. Then you have to blow another hefty chunk of change just to get the machine you spent $3000 on to even be workable. Yes, I know you can't get a quad dual-core Opteron for $3000 but I think you see the point.

The point here is that you need to determine what the priorities are of the workstation and then build the workstation accordingly.

all of those dude he does everything to do with multimedia. except he doesnt do 150million polygon scenes his compy isnt good enough.

Can you tell me specifically what applications he uses? You may want to ask him all these questions and then post back here.

Maya, after effects, and XSI