Another "budget" option to consider:
If you got the HD software, buy a used HD/Native PCIe card(around $700), a digilink license($299) and 1 or 2 used 192 IO's(NOT the 192 Digital). From my own experience going from the 003 on firewire to HDN(on the exact same 6-core PC), performance was very good(and considerably better than with the 003). If you went with 12.4HD, then the Digilink license is not required. I routinely did larger mixes than my friend's HD3 rig could handle and a pair of 192's with a pair of lightpipe preamps gives a full 32 in on a very reasonable budget. Just food for thought
