I beg to differ. Of cause CPU power is very important, but with the HUGE sample libraries in use today, so is RAM. That’s why Kontakts Purge feature is so valuable.
Skip this paragraph if you’re familiar with what Purge does. Purge removes all samples from memory and then, on the first play-though, reloads only the samples actually used. This will drastically reduce the used amount of memory.
To get some figures, I did a test on an “ordinary” 5 minute track I’m working on right now. For the bass part I use the Scarabee Rickenbacker library. When first loaded, this library gobbles up 431,72MB. After putting the track through the Purge procedure, the memory footprint had dropped to 15,60MB. That’s quite a difference, isn’t it?