[fluxrad]

no. if it says his CPU is at 100% then it's his CPU.

I run ATA133 disks since I'm too cheap to get the new Serial-ATA [censored]. Now then, at my speed buffered disk reads happen at something like 30MB/sec (this is assuming UDMA is enabled, which is a given in Windows). W/ serial ATA, the speed would be considerable greater. There's no way he's reading or writing to disk at greater than 50MB/sec.

Now what about RAM. Well first off he's got 1.5 gig of the stuff so capacity isn't a problem. He's most likely running PC3200 so there's no particular bandwidth problem. One possibility (and I haven't checked this out) is that since he's running 1.5GB instead of 1.0GB he's not taking advantage of the dual channel capabilities of his motherboard. --> check your motherboard. Are there different colored slots? If so, make sure their filled up in pairs. That is to say, make sure only the blue slots are filled...next the black. I'm guessing you've got 2 blue filled and one black - this might be causing a memory bottleneck. However, this alone isn't enough to cause the problems you're seeing.

Realistically, the problem is the CPU. DVD ripping is seriously CPU intensive. So are database applications (one of which is PokerTracker). There are also a number of "cruncing" apps that you had listed. Unless you're running quad Xeons, you're going to be bottlenecked.

But...you've got a nice box so you just need to stop hammering it so hard. Or get about $50k together and we'll solve your problems with a Sun E420.