Always look at your buffer settings for startes, if you are live tracking with plugins and VSTs and your buffer length is so large that you can't track tight enough, then you will need to get a better processor. More cores is better than clock speed as audio processing is more of a parallel process than it is a serial process.
You can download CPU-Z just google it, and run it. It will give you the socket type for your CPU so you will know which processor socket type to get that will be a direct replacement. It will also give you a rundown of your processors specs so you will be able to compare newer CPUs to your current one.
As for streamlining your computer to free up CPU resources:
- Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragment and Registry repair Programs (CCleaner is good) frequently, at most once a month
- Go to run and type "msconfig", go to the startup tab, and remove any background programs you don't need at that moment to record/mix. Don't turn off things that you don't know what it is. Also go into services, at the bottom check "hide microsoft services" and then turn off all the programs you have installed that you don't use for recording. You can turn them back on again by starting the .exe file for that program, but your computer by default when restarted or turned on will have that background program off.
- After you reset your computer when changing settings in msconfig, go to the task manager, go to processes click the memory tab so that the list goes in descending order from most memory used to less used, right click and remove all programs that you are not using. If you want to use them again, run the program and it will start back up or reset your computer.
- With the task manager still open, open cubase when you see cubase show up in the Process tab, right click on it, hover over select priority and set it to realtime. Then right click it again, click set affinity and make sure that cubase can access all the cores on your computer, sometimes it is not always defaulted to all cores.
