Need Advice On System Upgrade

[SRB]

greetings all,

i have grown with my current system enough to warrant an upgrade...i really would like to gain more processor speed and girth, so i would like to change out my motherboard and make a few software and PCI changes...i'll list what i have currently and then what i'd like to do...please let me know if you see any potential problems or if you would make any further recommendations.

MY CURRENT SYSTEM:

PIII 450
SE440BX-2 motherboard
384 mb Kingston RAM
Rage/ATI XPERT 8mb AGP Video Card
MOTU 2408 MkI PCI 324(driver version 1.04.000)
MOTU MTPAV
2 parallel ports[one for Steiny and Waves dongles, one for printer hook up(currently not in use)]
AOpen V.90 modem
Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI card
Seagate Cheetah 9gb system drive
Seagate Cheetah 18gb audio drive
Jaz 2gb internal drive
CD-R Plextor PX-W8220T
Running Cubase 3.7r2 and Wavelab 3.04, and assorted DirectX(ver. 7) plug-ins on Win98SE

things have been very stable with this system after initial tweaking.

CHANGES CONSIDERED:

ASUS CUSL 2-C motherboard(133 system bus)
PIII 933mhz
768mb RAM
Cubase VST 5x
UAD-1 DSP PCI(drop additional parallel printer port)
...all else to remain the same?


the ASUS board has 4 USB ports, but i am avoiding using USB...currently have it diasabled in BIOS, but i may want to consider a surface control unit later...

thanks for taking these things under consideration for me, and giving me your feedback. i do appreciate it!

best regards,

steve

[BlindOwl]

Good luck on the upgrade.

If you are going to run 768K or more of ram, I would consider moving to Win2K. It is better suited to allocate the ram at those levels.

Processor prices are dropping as we type. Check the prices daily. I just saw an Athlon 1.4Ghz processor at the local mom and pop computer store for less than $150.

That same store had 512K Kingston ram for $94 yesterday. If you choose to run Win2K, buy as much ram as you can afford.

I highly recommend ASUS boards.

Your decision to avoid USB makes sense to me. I would take a look at firewire availability for the long run.

I am running Cubase VST 5.0 R7 and am very pleased with it. If you need 32 bit processiong, go for it, but I've found the 24 bit system to work very well and it costs much less.

[SRB]

thank you, BlindOwl...i think i'm going to stick with windows 98se and 512mb ram...i'm not quite sure that all my computer related peripherals have drivers for Win2k to get the job done in a stable fashion. the UAD-1 should free up more processor, too...

i am curently concerned with the best procedure(event ordering) to maximize upgrade time while minimizing aggravation...i believe the components themselves will prove no problem...i want to uninstall/install in the proper fashion...

i'm a tad skittish about the upgrade...i've been on the receiving end of botched PCI/software installations...but i gotta do it...i want to be as fully informed of potential pitfalls as possible before beginning.

thanks again,

srb
www.blantonemusic.com