hi. i have a PC w/an e-mu 1820m, and finally given up on it. it's just not stable in my box. anyways, i would like to get a 1394 card so that i could use it w/laptop as well.

i use Live, and rely on VSTis for all sounds and effects besides vocals. i only record one vocal track at a time. my stuff is pretty DSP intense (modulating delay feedbacks, synth parameters, mixer automation, several VSTis and several decent VST fxs as well).

my computer has a Pentium D 930 (2 3gz cores - not the new Core Duo but fast) 1gb DDR 566 SATA2 drives. it's a powerful box. since my recording demands are very simple i'm tempted to get a cheaper ($200-300) card, like the Prosonus Firebox or the M-Audio 410. but i'm unsure how much my software-based production method uses the soundcard DSP hardware. will i experience a significant performance hit (higher latency/less total tracks/etc) if i scale down? or do the VSTis (halion/FM7/battery mostly) use the processor almost exclusively? since upgrading my computer from a 2.6 P4 i haven't gotten past 50% on Live's CPU meter, disk gets kinda high sometimes though.

so any reccommendations and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

As far as I know there're almost no sound cards that provice additional DSP resourses (except Pyramix and ProTools TDM). Basically, you will get better audio performance because of better engineered hard- and software. And, of cource, lower latencies (the lower the latency the higher the CPU load though...)