Upgrading my DAW PC. Which is more beneficial, clock speed or amount of cores?

[Tesseract]

Hey peeps,

Its upgrade time for my DAW PC (which is currently an AMD4400 x2 3gb ram) so whatever I upto will be a big improvement!

I can't decide between the AMD Phenom 3.4GHZ Quad core or the Phenom 2.8GHZ Six Core.
The X6 is £155
The X4 is £143
..so no real price difference but i'm wondering which would be more useful/benificial for a DAW? Speed or cores?

(Using Cubase 5.5 by the way)
Any ideas?

 

[Ermz]

With the recent 5.5 update I'd say more cores is a better bet. If Cubase can adequately distribute the load between them you can always make the missing clocks back via overclocking.

 

[Mutant]

More cores for multiple plugins, or more Hz for single CPU hungry plugins.

 

[SimonSez]

I remember when I went from a dual core Intel E8500 to a quad core Intel Q9550, my CPU usage in Cubase dropped by around 40%. So I would say increased cores = better performance.

 

[Kazrog]

Increased cores = better performance for almost any task, especially audio DSP. The more symmetric multiprocessing you have, the better everything works. Cubase works like a dream on multi-core systems. Intel Core 2 Quad here on my DAW box, a couple of years old now but still rocking.

 

[Tesseract]

Well I ended up going for an Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz (i overclocked it to 3ghz), 6GB 1600mhz RAM and a solid state hard drive for the OS/Apps.
Really glad I chose the intel in the end its working a treat! I completly forgot that the i7's show up as 8 cores in windows...i know it only has 4 but the hyperthreading makes it act as 8. I've had 8-10 delays/verbs, synths, Superior Drummers, loads of EQs and compressors, several instances of Nebula, 50+ tracks and the meter hasn't gone past 20% yet! Win!

 

[barricade]

Wow..nice! How much did u spend?

 

[Tesseract]

Wow..nice! How much did u spend?

Around £600-£650 for the mobo, CPU, RAM, SSD and PSU....think that was it

 

[Dexter_prog]

Is this "more cores = better" for all DAWs or just for Cubase 5.5?

 

[barricade]

Very inexpensive for such results! I have to buy something similar!