buying a new PC

[popka]

Hello, I wonder if anyone can advise me on a good value, decent PC stack for vocal and guitar recording using soundforge and cubase, probably through a mixer or decent external soundcard. I have been told I need at least 1 gig or RAM and a decent processor. Everything so far comes up in the region of about £400 but any deals or good bargains would be good to know about. Also advice on a good mixer and soundcard would be much appreciated... a mixer with mic. compressor. Can you get soundcards that do this? Cheers.

[pcdoc4christ]

You probably want a PC with a large hard drive, a DVD drive (which will also play CDs) and a DVD-RW drive (which will also burn CDs), 1024 MB (1 GB) of RAM, dual processors, and the Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system.  Do not wait to purchase a PC with Windows Vista, as that OS is likely to have problems with its initial release.  Windows XP systems will likely be sold at reduced prices when the non-beta version of Windows Vista is released by MS.

  

[popka]

thanks for the advice. When you say I need a dual processor I assume you mean dual core. What are examples of dual core processors? Will it state it in the description or do I need to know a pentium from a celeron, etc, with regard to this? Cheers.

[pcdoc4christ]

http://www.intel.com/products/processor/coreduo/
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_9485_13041,00.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/03/dual_core_stress_test/index.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html