computer swap recommendable?

Hi guys,
I've got an odd question maybe

My system (Pentium 4 CPU 3.40GHz 2 Gb RAM, windows XP pro, M-audio 2496 audiophile, and loads of other plugins in Sonar 7) is doing fine, all 'tweaked' for audio (you know, turned lots of stuff off and on in BIOS, removed services etc.) and so on. It's doing it's job fairly ok, although I feel it's got to work hard to deliver.

Now, I've got a chance to swap it with a brandnew Dell XPS 630 : Processor Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9400 (2.66GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB) and 4 gigs of RAM... Graphics card: DUAL 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT card. This slick baby's running on Vista Ultimate (I don't know if that's good yet).

Would you reccomend such a swap?: it would mean a lot of work, I'm aware, reinstalling everything (were did I put those f**** cd's again), transferring gigs of project data etc.
PLUS I'd have to reinstall the old machine to make it do office jobs again (network, office software and the likes,...)

If I should go for it, could I then just take out the SATA data disk, that has all the audio data and plug it in the new one? It would be a fast way to swap the data at least,
please advise,

Best regards,
RiveraMan

Greetings RiveraMan,

Another option would be what I did. Go to http://www.pcboost.com and buy a whole new motherboard/cpu/memory kit and upgrade it. I have done this on 2 computers with no problems whatsoever. Windows XP reboots, detects the new hardware, asks for drivers, and reboots again. Everything worked perfectly although Microsoft Office had to reactivate itself. MY DAW is now a quad-core AMD with 2 GB of memory — it runs so nice!

Regards,
David

Sounds like a good deal, RiveraMan. It'll definitely perform better, especially if you use samplers.

Of course, if you move the old drives over you won't have Vista anymore, you'll have whatever was on your disk, presumably XP Pro or Home. You'd have to then upgrade the O/S to be able to use all of your 4GB of RAM, which might entail purchasing Vista, since the Dell probably didn't come with a full installation disk.

Then there is the issue of Vista compatibility and M-Audio drivers, and there do seem to be issues there. Check out the M-Audio forums for a reality check.

If I were in your position, I'd grab the new machine, install the old drives, stay with XP for the time being and just accept that you can only use 75% of your RAM. You'll still be getting the faster FSB and CPU.