FWIW I recorded my whole album on a 2008 Lenovo Thinkpad T61p with a T9500 (2.5GHz) Intel Core 2 Duo and 4 GB RAM on a 128GB SSD using Sonar X2 and X3.  No problems at all.  I had 14-18 tracks with plugins on most songs.  Never had a dropout or performance problem.

StarTekh
Harvey: Asus MoBo and an Intel Core 2 duo at 2.2 gigs......tell me the exact model of the motherboard !

Asus p5b-vm se

I tried loading a new case with my old P4 DAW guts and it won't boot, the new power supply did not have all the connections I needed for the Asus P4C800E Deluxe Mobo so I tried the old one in the new case. No ceegar it would not boot.
 
So I am thinking I have to make that old office computer the one with the Asus p5b-vm se & core 2 Duo 2.2 gig into a new DAW. I may load on an unused copy of XP Pro and go back to 8.5.1 Producer, or I may go to 7/X3. I have to think on it. My next task is to try and recover all the data on my old DAW drives (although I have 99% of it backed up to DVD already) I shall see as things unfold. I just bought a new i5 Dell box for my estimating tasks. And it has a terabyte HD if I can load what is on the old DAW HD's into the new Office box I can select what I want and load all that onto the new DAW.

Thanks overkiller that gives hope to a new /X3 build.