If you want it to run Vista, the successor to XP coming out next year, you'll need at least 1GB of RAM and your video card must be Directx 9 compatible. My friend is a manager at a pretty big UK company that supplies cheap PC's and the spec that Vista needs to run is going to cause them problems as they're beta testing it.

Prices for RAM will not be going down much in the next year at least. If any of the RAM manufacturers trade on the stock exchange then this would be a safe as possible buy IMO.

Molina

Vista requires 1GB of RAM minimum....I doubt it. BUT, any good computater should have a gig anyways..........

Vista will likely be advertised as only needing 512MB RAM which will be like saying a car only needs a pint of petrol/gas. It'll run, you just wont be able to do anything with it.

Molina

Eh, pretty much any decent computer with sufficient RAM will suffice. I personally would go with any AMD processor around 2.5 GHz, at least 2 GB of RAM, and make sure you get some good stuff, not anything anyone tries to sell you with your computer. Buy it separate and from some place like Newegg. Be sure to check sites for technical spec comparisons and benchmarks. Also, I'd recommend getting a SATA drive at the very least, and if you can get a 10k RPM drive instead of 7.2k, go for it. Make sure it has a decent sized buffer, too (at least 16 MB). These are fairly expensive, but you'll notice a difference with PT and dealing with large databases. For extra storage you can get any old IDE 7.2k RPM drive. As far as video cards go, nothing more than 128 MB is really necessary. 256+ is overkill for poker... really only necessary for first person shooters and stuff.

Really I emphasize RAM and hard drive specs over processor because the poker stuff really isn't processor intensive and the price/performance ratio is too prohibitive -- especially if you're going with dual core and all that crap. Sans monitor and speakers, if you part this out it should cost less than $600 (and you can bring this down to $450 if you spend time looking for good deals), including shipping and handling.

I wouldn't worry about Vista now, it's not really a concern. Like most people, you probably won't upgrade when it comes out. I can tell you that on my laptop (1.86GHz Pentium M, 2 GB [of good RAM], 5400 RPM drive, and 256 MB GeForce) I can do as many tables as I like on any poker site (6 at PR, 5 on the Cryptos, 7 at Party, 6 at Absolute) without any problem. The only one that gives me any problem is Absolute, when I have PT auto-importing and PAHUD running at the same time. This is mainly because Absolute launches a separate instance of an application for each table and their coders are shitty.

Keep in mind that the people writing the poker clients want to make them accessible to people without top of the line computers... you don't need to go overboard here.

Anyway, take this with a grain of salt or not... but I do have two degrees in computer engineering and I build all my own boxes

Sure...I can see that then. I just question whether the CPU is enough.

My laptop has an AMD XP3000+ (1.8Ghz), 1.25GB RAM and it can't handle >6 tables of PR with PT. So I just dunno if 2.0Ghz is enough...that's why I'm thinking that dual core is a must.

I think you're incorrectly attributing the slowness to just the "speed" of the processor. You need to take into account that your RAM might not be very fast, the fact that laptop hard drives are slower, and above all this, the AMD has a slower FSB and less cache than a comparable Pentium processor. Processor companies rely on people not knowing the details of the processors and just going on the GHz. Although we have different systems, note that I have a Pentium M and I have no problems with multitabling (while at the same time running a web browser, bittorrent client, RSS reader, litestep [replaces Explorer, more resource intensive], music player, IRC client, shell client, AIM client, etc.). Some of this might come from your video card as well (you haven't mentioned what video card you have yet).

Well, I know that it's 100% my processor that's holding me back. When I open up the task manager, the PF Usage is well below max (at about 25%) but the CPU usage is maxed out the entire time that I'm running 6+ tables with PAHUD but no PT...PT would kill the poker client.
My vid card is the GeForce4 420 Go 32Mb. HD is 4200RPM. I'm enjoying your advice...so please don't stop If I don't have to shell out for a dual core, then I'd be very happy...I'm just worried about spending the $$ on what you're suggesting and not have it perform...so i'm just being careful