The perils of a multi-function PC

[Newc]

Hmmm. I, too, have a SB PlatPro Audigy, which works well enough for direct recording with VSTs in Audition. If I can keep that with a new system, that's a savings for me

I've got a 1GB video card now, (ATI Radeon HD 3600), and 4GB RAM in XP Pro, but I'm running into "your video memory sucks" errors when trying to render poster-sized prints in the later versions of Poser. While more system RAM would help, so would a larger video card with 3 or 4 GB of memory of its own. I definitely want one that will render my brother's artwork nicely and quickly for sellable prints, without tying up my computer for a week to do it (did that many years ago with his first Mardi Gras poster - took a week to render in Bryce ).

I did move up to SATA not too long ago for all 4 internal drives, and it's definitely better than IDE. Still limited to 4 drives on the MOBO, however, which means I still use USB drives (3 at the moment), and that can be a problem once you factor in the USB scanner, USB printers, USB this, USB that, and have to run everything through 4-port USB hubs. Bottlenecks are a pain.

[The Guitar]

I think a 64 bit os will help, on top of ram and a better card. A solid state drive wouldn't hurt. my pal has a ssd and either a 4 or 5 gig gfx card, and with 3 games running maxed, he might use half the card's space. The only thing I had to do was get the win7 x64 drivers for the sb audigy and other programs I used on XP.

[Newc]

SSDs are still overpriced IMO. 7200 RPM drives are fine for my needs.

[Carbuff]

SSDs are still overpriced IMO. 7200 RPM drives are fine for my needs.

That, and I dont trust them. They just fail without warning and you lose everything. Blue screen, reboot, bios cant find drive. Youre screwed. They do perform well though. I have one in my porn computer. LOL! I actually have a single machine with win7 on 1 500 gig drive and win8 on the ssd. Its a dual boot setup with different systems on different drives. So its basically 2 different computers in 1. It works well like that.

[Hellbat]

Put your OS on a small SSD (120GB or so) and everything else on an HD (or four). Trust me, once you are used to a PC that boots to desktop in 15 seconds, you'll never go back to booting from a hard disk.

If your SSD dies out of warranty, just grab another small one and reinstall the OS and start again. I've been running SSD as my boot/application drive for over 2 years now and the speed of it for booting and loading apps is terrific.