is this computer good enough for recording?

[UncleHerb]

a friend just gave me a 475 mhz compact presario 5441 minus the hard drive and ram ... would it be worth it to buy a hard drive , ram and a sound card for the purpose of using sound forge or something like it? i would like to mix down from my aw4416 to sound forge for further editing

i know the video card is "integrated" which i take to mean not changable.. so i wonder if the audio card may be the same. anyone have any experience with this model?

thanks to any who can help

 

[subtractor]

Most retail compaqs are the biggest pieces of shit ever made short of packard bell. The pro workstations are all right though.
I'm not sure where that one fits in, but if it's got built in video and or sound on the mobo it's most likely retail. Is it a pentium 2 or 3 or...
I would think it would probably not be a good choice for an audio machine. Too slow, too compaq...
But if you do, there should be settings in the bios to disable any onboard video or sound. It might be worth it if you could find the other parts cheap and all you need it for is soundforge.

Yep, just call me Mr. Helpful!

 

[Barometer]

You might want to see what you can do to upgrade that processor. My suggestion is to find out what motherboard it is and find the fastest processor compatible and repost. And I agree with subtractor, unfortunatley Compaqs are usually crap.
You would probably need to invest around $1k plus to get a decent DAW out of it, but that is not bad.
Then again, you could probably build a new system for not much more

 

[SPINSTERWUN]

I agree that it might be a better for you to purchase a new computer. It, of course, depends on your budget.

 

[Seanmorse79]

If you're only doing 2-track stuff, it should be okay. You probably won't be able to run serioius plugins in realtime like Ozone, but it should work.

I'm not too familiar with Compaq (but I've heard the complaints). Usually, you can disable the onboard audio via CMOS or a jumper, and add a different sound card - same thing with video, unless Compaq has some freakish proprietary setup that doesn't allow it.

 

[christiaan]

Yeah, what Seanmorse79 says..

Straightforward tracking does not require a lot of cpu power. It's the realtime plugins that crave for cpu cycles.
Tracking never has been a big deal on my celeron 466 with 128mb and 5400rpm hard drive.

 

[christiaan]

Oh wait... That '475 MHz' made me suspicious so I did a search and yes.. it is a AMD K6-2 cpu. Great in the office but less on most other applications. Upgradepaths for the CPU are very limited and too expensive to justify. It is likely that you can do some tracking with it but just don't expect much.