My 2006 Quad Core has been a great computer, but I've been asking more and more of it, and it's starting to buckle. I have fairly large templates for composing, including 75-100 tracks of MIDI that power mainly virtual instruments, and maybe 20-30 auxes with VE Pro returning from the slave machine, plus auxes for OB gear. I have to use a lot of audio tracks (30-50), even in addition to the MIDI/VI tracks (which I don't like to render until the very end, if at all). All audio tracks and VI auxes have plug ins applied, but I have a UAD Quad card and a TC Powercore express card to help with those. Though I was pushing it, It was all working reasonably well until my console died, and I went ITB with 5 Euphonix controllers.
So I went and purchased a new Mac Pro yesterday- 8 Core 2.4 GHz. (It will have at least 16GB RAM). The RAM speed is 1066 MHz.
I would have to spend $1500 or $2700 more to get the 2.66G or 2.93G, respectively, which I didn't think was a good value. They do have 1333MHz. RAM though. Besides, $1500 more gets me a 2.66 12-Core.
I also have a 2008 "Harpertown" 8-Core 3.2 GHz. 16GB RAM (800 MHz.) machine in my video editing room. That machine is actually more than I need for the type and amount of video work I do. Even though it's a couple years old, it's still a really fast computer at 3.2 GHz.
The new machine I got is going to replace the either the DP machine or the video machine. Of those 2, I want the one that is most powerful with DP, to be the DP machine. Either is fine for the video stuff.
So you see my dilemma, what is more important to DP, faster clock speed, faster RAM, or the new Westmere processors?
The new 8-core is still in the box. I suppose I could just vomit and get the 12 core

