Quote Originally Posted by xfive
Economically I can get a 3GHz cpu, RAM and motherboard for less than one of these DSP cards.... How big of an advantage do the cards give you ? If it's not 1.3GHz "worth" (obviously the DSP chips run at lower clockspeeds and are designed with very specific tasks in mind) then I am inclinied to go the new PC route.

I guess my basic question is how much shit can you load up in one of those DSP cards before it maxes out?
I'd be intereted to know this too, I'm also curious about how much of the load is actually taken by the dsp, as I remember reading some plugins run partly off the CPU...

Given the price of them, I've always thought buying a rackmount pc & running VST Stack or something would be a more versatile option, but I've never seen anyone make a real comparison between the two.