Helpful link. Basically what I was looking for. After getting a closer look at the G5, I'm thinking about swapping out my P4 and giving that to my kid. I have a Digi002 but didn't want to part with that. Checking out Guitar Tracks or Sonar for the PC for him.

RTAS plug-ins really do chew up the CPU. Especially when you get up to 10-12 tracks and altering effects parameters inline. 1 GB of RAM and a firewire hard drive barely gets you there.