Ableton Forum

My current system:
Dell 8200s Pentium 4 cpu, 2.0GHz
768 MB ram
80Gig HD
SB Live Value soundcard
Windows xp

New system Im considering:
HP Pavilion Slimline s3300f
Duel Core AMD Athelon 64x2 2.6GHz
2048 MB ram
500GB 7200RPM SATA HD
onboard soundcard...??
Windows Vista (scary)

Just the slimline tower .. out the door for $350.00USD

My only issue with the Dell is latency, but the cost to upgrade the additional ram is way more expensive than a new system.

I sure appreciate your thoughts as i'm a poor noob.
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So 2x 1 gig sticks of ram cost more than the comp you are considering, even when you sell the spare stick?

Percieved latency issues not only exist with your computor but also choice of sound card, speed of hard drives and if your computor is strictly a DAW machine or multi purpose. Also, how you decide to use Live, or what you are trying to achieve.

Depending on how new you are to using DAW's and how far into setting yourself up, make sure you fully understand your current limitations ie where is your "latency" coming from vs your developing experience and musical goals before spending your money.

I have no experience with vista, but it appears to be a mixed bag right now, good for some but not others.

Cheers.

You shouldn't have to pay more that $80 for that ram, so if that's your only issue, you should just get the ram upgrade.

However, the HP is clearly an upgrade on that Dell. You'll see a performance boost across the board.

Latency is probably a soundcard issue. You can fix that for $100 or so by getting a very basic card.

Go here http://www.cdw.com/webcontent/configura ... ial_R1.asp

And run the system scan. It will tell you what kind of crucial brand memory you need. You need to run Internet Explorer and have Active X installed for the system scan, or you have to download a small app.

Welcome to the forums!

Latency=mainly soundcard. Internal is not gonna get very low.

.m