I'm still working on optimizing my 2003-vintage homebrew DAW. I'm not up to the full 133 Mbps capability of the ATA bus, but the drives have been benchmarked at six times the data rate they were achieving before. The system is ready to use in a minute from a cold start (45 seconds faster than it was before) and the CPU isn't getting hammered like it used to. I've got a utility (Advanced System Care 4) with a "Game Booster" button that strips the OS down to basics when I'm ready to work. I'm starting to think I can make some serious music on this thing again.

Okay, the questions. First, where is the best place to put temp files on a system with two fast hard drives? On the same drive as the programs or on the second drive? I guess this applies to Windows files, too. A cursory web search says that the temp and swap files should be on the second drive.

Next question: I've got a 128 Mb graphics card, but I'm not certain I've got it configured correctly. The CPU bogs down pretty well and the audio stutters when I run certain visualizations in Winamp or WMP while streaming music. Screen resolution is set to 1024 x 768. Hardware accel is set to full. I just switched write combining off.

Any other tweaks you can think of are welcome. I just received a 'new' used mobo from another forum member but haven't installed it yet. I'd like to see how far I can go with the existing system before I make that change.

System specs: Win XP Pro SP3, PC Chips M863-G mobo, AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU, 2 Gb PC2700 DDR RAM, WD Caviar Blue 7,200-RPM HDs (160/500 Gb), Dell P991 17" CRT monitor, Invidia GeForce FX 5200 display adapter.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."