JMCecil,
You brought up a good point about overclocking- the heat. I’m not sure I want to overclock due the the extra heat generated, not to mention I want my investment to last as long as possible- so without overclocking should I still get at least close to your benchmark results?
You can “safely at your own risk 
” OC the 980x using the stock fan to 4Ghz. But, you want a good power supply. I have a 1200 watt Antec. I ran off the stock cooler for about a week at 4Ghz. If I remember right the temp hovered around 35C , 50C under load. I have a much more advanced water cooling set up to support the overclock I have it at now. But, I did it for fun. I just like messing around with computers.
I can’t say what kind of improvement you will get. Based on the Benchmark results from that site, you would take something like a 15% to %20 hit on plugin numbers. But, that’s not a straight across number for all DAW usage. i.e. if you use large sample libraries, throughput is more important than total load.
Unfortunately, there are just too many factors involved to yes/no that question.
EDIT: but if you were only getting about 70ish comps on your existing system, and you will get at least 250ish or more on the new CPU, that’s still a HUGE improvement.
Thanks! You are correct, even without overclocking I should see a HUGE performance increase…which will make my composing life soooooo much easier. Off to www.newegg.com to order…
I can’t emphasize enough how important a good power supply is to multi-core CPUs and general system stability. Probably the single most overlooked and under appreciated component in a computer.
EDIT: That’s not to say that what came with your current system won’t support the upgrade. Just recommend you look closely.
Hmmm… if it’s fun for you, want to build me a water-cooled 980x system?? 
depends on how much money you don’t mind watching disappear off the top 
I posted this pic in the “your studio thread”
Nice. Is it silent with the water cooling? All told how much did the rig cost?
No, I don’t have the fan controller installed yet. And I haven’t put the water block on the video card yet. So, right now it’s actually much noisier than the PC it replaced. Once those two things are done, it will be extremely quiet.
I can’t publish the cost on the intertubes for health reasons.
Well I’m sure I’m wasting my money here, but I found this deal online last night:
http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/hp-pavilion-elite-core-i7-extreme-edition-desktop-pc-coupon/22515.aspx
So I went ahead and ordered this PC, which is supposedly the top consumer desktop according to the sales guy. I upgraded to the 980x, which he said is enabled for overclocking in the bios and that overclocking doesn’t violate the 2-year warranty.
So I guess I got what I wanted, a stock i7 980x PC that can be overclocked.
The total price before taxes was about $1680 (it’s $1499 with the i7 970 if you don’t want to overclock), but I figured for just $180 more why not go for the top one.
That’s an awesome deal. I spent more than that on just the CPU and the RAM.
Well it still feels like a lot of money 
But I’m glad it was at least a good deal relative to this particular model
Can’t wait until it arrives!
Please stop all this talk… I have already been searching for the best price on the 980x and the 970 hex 
I upgraded my machine in November 2008 based around the i7 920 and can honestly say I have never ran out of juice in a project (unless I load slate FG-X on the mix bus).
I’d imagine with a i7 hex core you’d have ample power for a few year to come!! I want one!!!
Mine has more bling factor though. Which is very important in a DAW! Shabby box = Shabby mix right?
Well I’m sure bling can have an effect, just like Gigahertz.
I have already calculated. My current 2.4GHz 4-core Q6600 adds up to a total of 9.6GHz. My new 6-core i7 980x can be clocked to 4GHz (maybe 4.5…). Now, I’ve heard that the i7 enables each core to act like 2. So does that mean it’s like 12, 4GHz cores for a total of 48GHz? So my music when recorded and mixed on this PC will certainly sound somewhere between 14.4 and 34.4 GHz better
remember that the HT threads are not actual cores/paths and don’t truly give you x2. However, the new i7s are way better at taking advantage of the secondary thread state. But, they still go off into lala land occassionally with silly thread lock on the HT thread.
Also, the i7 is just a better architecture than the Q6600, so you are getting not just a Ghz boost.
Lala land? Tell me more? How do I detect such a problem and resolve it?
CPU meters … and you don’t. Clears up on its own, like a hangover. Actually, you can use things like process explorer to try and kill whatever is locked in the claws of one of the HT threads.
Thanks for the info. Do you ever see this when you are ONLY running Cubase on win7?
Yes, you see it occasionally running nothing but the OS. It is a flaw, if flaw is the right word because it isn’t a ‘bug’ per-say, in the way HT works.
Could someone explain how to set up this project? Thank you.