Pls help putting together the BEST SOLUTION for PP and AE CS4

Question

Hi guys
I was tasked to put together the best machine (machines) for video editing / rendering .. money is not an issue.
My client is a TV broadcasting network and they do lots of videos everyday .. They want to render their work as FAST as possible because sometimes they have tight deadlines and rendering and re rendering (if there are mistakes) has cost them .. so now they're serious about getting the best technology to achieve best rendering time possible, but in a bit of practical sense of course.. i mean there's no sense spending 1000USD or more for a piece of technology that offers under 10 second faster rendering only ..
What they do and want
- edit/put together/ sequence lots of videos constantly, under premiere cs3 (will upgrade to cs4 on the new machine)
- use affter effects for some effects and 3D stuffs.. but not that much.. but increasingly as time goes by and their video editors get more affter effects training..
- needs really really fast rendering!! Right now it takes them typically 1-2 hours to render stuffs, and what to cut this time by half or more..
Existing Setups on work stations:
Intel QuadCore (Q6600, i7, Q9550, Xeon x3220, and the likes)
4GB RAM DDR2 1066mhz
Highend motherboards
GeForce 9500GT , 9800GT, and GTX 260 216sp
GSKILL Falcon 64GB SSD Drive as primary
1TB Western Digital BLACK edition drives for storage
Software:
Windows XP 32 bit
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 (80% of all their work done here)
AE CS3
etc..
Running NOD32 Antivirus
I am an somewhat of an expert in Hardware and stuff, i build custom PC's machines most of my life but i have limiited knowledge on optimizing hardware for VIDEO EDITING stuffs.. so i turn to you all.
I do understand that w/ video editing CPU is the most important, followed by RAM, and ofcourse by HDD for disc caches and stuff.. and where videocard may come to an advantage as well. and normally i'd suggest the fastest components available . i7 , extreme processors, skulltrail dual quad setups perhaps? RAID 0 SSD Drive? etc.. but I do not know w/c gives the most advantage, and w/c is a waste of money..
I also read about quadro cards offering really big performance improvements using CUDA tech etc..
again im not the expert at this type of requirment.. so i need your advises..
with unlimitted PRACTICAL budget given to me to come up w/ a solution I initially thought a rendering farm would be the solution, but upon reading around it seems there's no rendering farm solution for PP CS4.. just the adobe after effects part.. so i had to go back to the drawing board and suggest really powerful work stations instead..and perhaps have them migrate to 64bit OS for that "extra" performance.. i myself am on win7 64bit and it's looking mighty good.
1) is this the right move?
2) is it still worth it to put together rendering farm for AE renders only? or might as well concentrate funds on the machines/workstations?
Also along the PRACTICALITY LINE, would it be practical to maintain all the existing machines, and instead build a manned RENDERING MACHINE w/ PP and AE (basically desktop or Server if they are faster at rendering w/ the best specs for the purpose etc) where they can just throw the workload to some guy there for rendering? Atleast the editors can continue using the workstations while the rendering machine guy is at work? and even perhaps setup a gigabit lan network where the RENDERING MACHINES can dynamically pull the work load via the network , not needing to transfer the files to the rendering machine first ? etc
as you can see im not only looking for the best machine, but the best STRATEGY for my client.
Good suggestions would be much appreciated.
regards to all

Answer 1

in a nut shell no. if you do not have to "Share" then Avid is pointless Adobe is a far better answer.
Avid solutions still need a computer. The Mojo.Nitris are a joke and Avid no longer provides computers even the Symphany comes with your choice of Apple Mac Pro or HP 800. (Dual Xeon)
there are better "hardware" answers that what Avid sells for Adobe. Decklink, Aja to name a few.
if you have to share then you have no choice. this is the one area Abode does not lead.
renders have to do primarily with 2 things CPU power (Xeon will render faster than single i7)
and Drives. the faster your drive set up the faster the render. Memory does play a part and so does the video card depending on what codec and to what
it also depends on WHAT you are rendering and from what for the HDDs.
without knowing your work flow format and codec its impossible to suggest something.
in terms of rendering
Core i7
Dual Xeon (faster unless still doing DV/HDV thru firewire)
Sonnet raid array
Scott
ADK