The one thing I wish Cubase had that Reaper has is a feature called ‘anticipative FX processing’. This option essentially uses idle CPU time to render effects on tracks in the background. It automatically keeps track of changes in the plugins on the tracks and re-renders them. This is essentially a channel freeze that is done automatically and in the background but it improves performance dramatically without interrupting work flow.
I’d love to see this background magic in Cubase 7.