Getting a new computer -- Please help

[mbouteneff]

Hi Everyone,

I'm finally getting a new DAW...my poor, trusty 5+ year old Dell is just not hacking it. However, hardware is NOT my strength. Could you please check out the template DAW specs "draft" below, and let me know what you think is unnecessary, inadequate, or simply a bad idea? (I'm assuming Vista is not recommended, from everyone's comments elsewhere in the forum.) I generally record solo, one input at a time, miking vocals and acoustic guitar, going DI with electric guitar and bass, and use a Yamaha keyboard to control Reason/MIDI.

I ALREADY HAVE:
OLD PC: Dell Dimention 8200, Pentium 4 CPU 2.00 GHz, 1.99 GHz, 512 MB RAM
Sonar Producer 6
Reason 2.5
M-Audio Delta 1010LT soundcard
M-Audio DMP3 preamp
M-Audio Studiophile BX5a monitors

NEW DAW SPECS:
AMD x2 @ 3ghz 2mb L2 [6000+]
4gb high quality low latency 1T DDR2 800 ram
256mb AMD 690G HDMI & VGA output
500gb 16mb cache SATA 3.0 x 2, /raid
Clear 7.1 8ch 192Hz onboard sound
20x DVD+/-RW
420w PSU (600w SLI ready optional +$50)
4 SATA, 1 EIDE, 6 USB (4 ear 2 front), 3 PCI, 1 16x PCI-E SLI,
Front audio & mic ports
Windows Vista Premium included
Antivirus, anti-adware, and anti-malware protection installed
case details:
10 Drive bays:
External Bays 5.25": 4
External Bays 3.5": 2
Internal Bays 3.5": 4
Dimensions (WxDxH): 200 x 450 x 430 mm
Cooling Options:
(1) 80mm tri-color side auxiliary case fan (Included)
(2) 80mm back auxiliary case fan (Included)
Windowed side panel
420Watt ATX12V power supply with dual fans
2 Front mounted USB ports

What do you think? Replace Vista with XP32? Anything else that can be improved or reduce cost? Thanks for your help -- any advice would be HUGELY appreciated.

-Mike

[k-do]

you might see alot better perform out your old cpu with more ram.as far as vista you should be ok with it most m-audio products are vista capable i dont know about the older software but ive got cubasesx3,sonar7,reason4,flstudio running on vista now with no problem.

[Lambo]

I agree, more ram with your old cpu would improve the performance. I don't know about the AMD versus Intel chipset though, you'll need to check if there are any compatibility issues. As for Vista, I am using Vista Premium with Sonar 6 and a Focusrite 26IO firewire interface with no issues.