Maddog, my last system was almost identical to yours. I upgraded the chip and vid card recently. AMD 2.1g 512 ddr (going to 1g when my order arrives) ATI 8500dv vid card ASUS A7M266 board 2 IBM deskstar drives (40/60g) Here's what I've found about CG and computer hardware... Bryce - get the fastest CPU you can. It works on just a little ram and low end vid cards but is CPU hungry. Poser - get as much ram as you can, its ram hungry. It will max your cpu no matter what you have, but runs your memory out of this world a lot and slows down with memory limitations. Pandromeda - yeah, cpu/ram are important, but you best have a high end large memory openGL video card cuz it uses the vid card for the display like you wouldn't believe. And of course, we all need fast, large HD's to store all that crap we collect and generate. So, IMHO, the ultimate graphics machine is either specific to the software or it better have all the latest gizmos in it.