yes, it should play back smoothly. When I first tried playing a clip of native hdv it (PPro 2.0) didn’t seem to like it, but I restarted my computer and tried it again and it played great, even with slowmotion and transitions on it. It also looked much better than the same clip from Cineform. (yeah I know that cineform is supposed to be so great, but side by side the native had much less compression artifacts on it) The shot was of a swimming pool with 30 or so kids playing in it. I also have a 7800gt and sata2 drives, but I’m using a Pentium D 830. I wish I knew how to help you, but just so you know, it should be playing back just fine.