Originally Posted by hesnotthemessia 
Decided to go for the NVIDIA 9500GT - I don't think I will miss losing one PCIE slot, at least for some time yet. I think the 8400 might be a bit underpowered for my needs - I don't play any games but use plenty of screen space with the two 24" monitors. Still, anythings better than my current Radeon 9250 AGP card!
If you still have the UD4 board in there, then you'll be loseing a pci slot not a pcix slot, althrough going off what you stated you'll proberly notice that even less!
I have one of those 8400's in my media box at home currently. It drives a 32" tv and a 22" monitor in their native resolutions without any issues. As long as your not playing games, you can get away with just about any of the current cards for display useage.
Any particular preferences regarding hard drive size/configuration and manufacturer? The only plugin I use which relies heavily on samples is Battery3. Total hard drive space filled with samples at present is about 23GB. Yes just 23GB! I don't do any hard disk recording at the moment - all finished stuff is recorded to CD and I have never recorded to hard disk from Cubase. I do intend to record to hard disk with this new system though. Internal hard drives are so cheap now. 1000GB drives seem the most cost effecient, though I can't really see myself ever needing more than 1000GB in total for all my needs. But it's better to have too much than too little! I will use one 1000GB drive for audio and another for samples. Plus a 250GB system drive.
That's some remarkable restraint on the drive usage. I know how bad I am for loading up whatever packages I can find to tinker around with. The original idea of the drives was to do what you discribed and keep samples and project data on seperate drives. As you say for the price these days you may as well have the extra just in case. For the system drive I like the seagate e.s. which you have in there already for it's speed and longlife (it's a searver class drive). The samsungs are in there for speed as well, althrough the 750gig one's have the same cache (which give it the speed) if you don't think you need quite as much as you've already got.
I ordered a Sonic Core Xcite today from The Production Room
. Should be with me in about 10 to 14 days. Just need to get this 3XS SA-i7 PowerDAW ordered and then wait patiently..............
I admit i've never played with any of the sonic core gear, looks interesting but they've never been common enough, that i've come across one. How does it measure up against the UAD your trading up from?
If anyone needs 4 UAD1 cards with all the plugins except for the Cooper Time Cube, Little Labs IBP, Precision De-Esser and Precision EQ then I have them for sale. Might have a spare 13 slot Magma Chasis aswell. Could be a cheaper option to purchase most of the UAD1 plugins this way (can be used with the UAD2) plus you will, of course, get the extra processing power of 4 UAD1s.
Sound on sound readers ad's time!
Pete.