Is it 64bit XP or not?
Odds are on not, so not really.

No its not 64bit xp. So why not then?

64 bit can utilize twice the ram that a 32 bit operating system can. The downside is that it actually needs it. 3GB of ram is plenty for a 32 bit.

What about the amount of tracks and plugins. Or do plugins such as reverb delay compressor and eq use cpu rather than ram(i would guess so since its an instant processing).
On the other hand i would think that pro tools loads recorded tracks into ram... so So if each track is about 80mb(for 4-5 min song) than it will be.. 24x80=almost 2000mb. Which will leave a spare gig of ram for system and plugins...

i dont know how much money or trouble a new mother board would be but you might want to look into a uad card. they are wicked plug ins and all the processing is done in the card (not your computer)

http://www.uaudio.com/menu/products.html

WinXP will technically only recognize 3Gb of RAM but you can get some advantage with 4Gb because it will load most of your drivers into the upper 1Gb pageblock and then you still have 3Gb pageblock for the rest of your applications and plugin's etc....bottom line...It doesn't hurt to have it....in fact 2 matched sticks of 2Gb RAM is what I'm running in my system with an RME FF800/Cubase and I've never had any problems....

With my mother board (at least as currently configured) it won't even address all of the 4th Gig of RAM. So the 4th DIMM didn't have the bang for the bucks that the other sticks had. But still, it was 40 bucks, so it didn't need to provide that much bang.

looking back at your post and what your current set up is vs your track needs i dont think you will have any problems. i run sx3, ez drummer, twice the tracks you do and have a computer that is not even in the same league as your
s

Well ok, i guess having 2 gigs in two sticks and 2 512 sticks can work for now and if we run into ram problems than we can always take advantage in 30 days besbuy refund policy 8-)

But how about a singlecore 2.4ghz athlon? should it be able to work with that many plugins?

PS. UAD card is out of question - expensive. We might just spend these money for real mixing with engineer.

yes. i have a a slower athlon processor on a much older pc and can run a project bigger than yours just fine

just adjust your buffer settings appropraitely, lower buffers when recording (under 11ms) and higher when mixing

song4gabriel wrote: lower buffers when recording (under 11ms)

That's a hell of a small buffer. Don't small buffers cause dropouts sometimes if your system can't keep up?

yes. but when you are recording, use small buffers and turn off unneeded plug ins

when mixing use high buffers and turn on all the plugin ins

also- are you familiar with the "track freeze" function of cubase? that will give you lots of extra firepower.

"64 bit can utilize twice the ram that a 32 bit operating system can."

Twice? It's 2^32 as much, I believe. Considerably more than "twice".

Computers have a surprising amount of processing power, just so much of it goes to waste.
Long story short, I saw some code tonight that when optimised and written in assembler (over .NET) it went from 2.4 seconds to 0.1 seconds. Waste less, want less.

Which version of ProTools are you using? PT8 is a hog. I can run it but still get buffer errors with an Athlon x2 7750 BBE running at 3.2GHz.

RTAS plugins also tend to be a bit more demanding. Particularly the ones that emulate hardware. Namely, most of them. A UAD card would help but only with the plugins for that card. Incidentally, I bought a UAD-1e Express pack for $130. UAD is blowing out the older cards.

PT7.4 might run a bit smoother and if you're mainly doing audio that would be just fine. PT8 is great for composition and midi but it's a hog. I'm looking into a Phenom II now. Seems that's the only way I'll be able to maintain a reasonable track count.