Upgrading a music production computer

pinksoir

Hey there, I hope someone could help me out here...

I am currently running an old enough computer for recording and producing music. Because of all the plugins I use, I'm starting to get stuttering and digital artifacting (pops and clicks). It's not too bad, but it's beginning to annoy me and holding me back in terms of how much processing of audio I can do.

So I'm wondering if you have any advice for upgrades. Currently it's running XP 32 bit on:

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R mobo
DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, 2666 MHz (8 x 333)
3326 MB DDR2 Ram (2x OCZ XTC Platinum Rev.2 OCZ2P800R21G, 2x Kingston HyperX KHX6400D2LL/1GN)


Looking at the specs of that motherboard it looks like it can handle up to Core2Extreme CPUs an up to 8GB of ram. Will upgrading the CPU give much of a performance upgrade, or will XP's inability to use more than 3.25GBs of ram hold it back? Should I make the jump to XP or Windows 7 64 bit?

Also, if I install a new CPU, will I have to reformat and reinstall windows again if I don't upgrade my OS?

Cheers and hope you can help.

Eboggles

I'd get a new CPU, motherboard and RAM tbh, along with a Windows 7 64-bit. Something like this would do:

Item|Price
Intel Core i5-3450 Box, LGA1155|€179.64
8GB-Kit G.Skill PC3-10667U CL9|€36.44
ASRock H61M/U3S3 (B3), Sockel 1155, mATX|€56.09
MS Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit SB-Version Englisch|€86.76
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€377.92

pinksoir

Hmmm. Might be a better idea. I'd been toying with the idea of upgrading altogether, but I don't have much spare cash atm. That's fairly cheap though.

Thanks for that.