SONAR Build

[notdeadyet]

I'm planning to build a machine to run SONAR, and am looking for advice on which socket/mobo to choose. I will have to run 32 bit XP (because of my audio interface - Mackie 400F), but will eventually want to upgrade the OS to be able to use more RAM.

My question is whether I should stay with LGA 775, or spring for LGA 1366 with an i7 920. I want to get the most out of SONAR that I can (and I've heard reports of great performance boosts going from 775 quads to i7 920); but my main requirement is stability/functionality. Any SONAR users here that can comment on this?

If not, general comments about the robustness of LGA 1366 mobos and the i7 920 would be appreciated. Also, among 775 CPUs, what would people recommend (for SONAR in particular or computationally intensive apps that take advantage of multiple cores in general)? I'm leaning to Q9550, though the Q8400 is almost $100 less and I'm not sure how a smaller cache and a few tenths of a GHz will affect performance.

I don't need to do this right away - I could wait a bit if better 1366 mobo's and/or i7 prices are around the corner.

Thanks!

[glc]

To me, the cost of i7 hardware makes it not worth it. Motherboards are expensive and DDR3 triple channel is a headache with a 32 bit OS, you need a 3x1, with 3x2 being pretty useless. I'd probably build with a plain old P5Q, a Q9550, and a 2x2 of DDR2-800. The other option is wait for i5, but you may not want to wait that long.

Does SONAR even use all 4 cores?