boring: help me with a processor comparison?

hey guys thanks for your expertise.

i have an opportunity to upgrade my concert laptop (work might buy my current one) but i want to be sure i'm making a smart move.

first things first, i only buy refurbished gear.

my current machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad 410.
Intel Core i5-540M 2.53GHz
128gb ssd
8gb DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz

http://www.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo-thin ... 50866.html

it's a great machine. however, i get a little nervous because my live REAPER project is...monstrous. it's essentially 17 entire projects merged into one with very little consolidation. this plays just fine on my core i7 DAW desktop, but i'm a little concerned that this laptop is underpowered for it.

so, i'm thinking about moving to an Asus q400a.
Intel Core i7-3632QM 2.2GHz
750 gb drive (i will replace with 128 gb ssd)
8gb DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6834231029

would this be a smart move? note that money isn't an issue. i break even.

the question really comes down to Cores vs Clock speed. i'm ignorant of the interplay between these two. otherwise, the machines are specced similarly, and i always disable stuff like wifi, security features, frills etc.

try it on your current laptop and see what it does? then maybe grab the upgrade if it does **** up..

It's hard to compare on speed of the processor itself anymore. I tried finding the Lenovo cpu benchmark here http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ but couldn't. I might just not have the model number correct. One thing to point out, the Asus is likely way faster than the Lenovo just based off the fact that the L3 cache is double the size. I'm not really sure though if 6MB is competitive these days though.

All I know is I've been running an Asus laptop with core i7 for almost two years and the thing is SMOKING fast. Great great laptop.

Does reaper take advantage of more than one cpu/core?
If not, you're not gaining much.
If so, you lose a lil speed but have more lanes for functions to be performed.

Have you taken a look at system performance when running reaper?
Is CPU appraoching 100% usage?
Are your projects possiblby more memory intensive than CPU?
Might be able to bump the RAM to 16GB and see improvement. (Even if you get the new system I would suggest going with 16GB.)

You mentioned money is not the problem so I would look for one of the highergen i7 with a clock as fast as or faster than the i5 you have and get 16GB of RAM.

The SSD will give you some improvement during recording and any functions that read from disk (mulitirack recording for example) a lot but most of what you're doing is likely loaded into and running in RAM, so the majority reads and writes are during saves amd loads. (Just saying you can likely save that unless its just something you prefer to do) Consider SSD are nice but have much lower lifespan that sata cause their a finite number of writes before they just stop working, without warning...

Sorry, Do not mean to get off the beaten path. Hope something at the top proves useful

thanks for the replies.

Does reaper take advantage of more than one cpu/core?

yeah this is REAPER not REN heh (did they ever fix that?)

performance: reaper has a great performance meter that gets very specific. it's not approaching 100% because i use a great deal of actions that automate muting previous tracks to preserve CPU. i could probably get away with using this laptop but i want to avoid ANY processor-related crackling. i've performed on it before with no issues so maybe i'm jumping at shadows. i just compare the i5 to my awesome DAW build and worry that i'm gonna overload my laptop.

Memory use at about ~2.5 gb and that's with some libraries that i plan to freeze out.

money's not a problem since i'm getting a $540 check from work for this older Thinkpad, but i'm still buying refurb so i'm limited to what i'm seeing in the usual channels. i'm willing to go as high as 750.

the drive that comes with the Asus is a 750 gb 5400 RPM drive though :/ i've heard it's best to use SSDs as library drives, which don't undergo a lot of writes.

From your response, I say go with the quad core i7 that you found on newegg. Not bad price but you just have to deal with the 14" display, unless you're connecting it to a monitor

i got that new machine and it is a smoker. thanks as always for your advice, guys.