[djjazzy41]

Originally Posted by nvansistine

I'm looking at getting a refurbished Mac Pro to replace my current iMac, but I'm still trying to understand what I'm looking at to optimize the specs.

Looking over some other threads, I've seen more people leaning towards Number of Cores > Faster CPU, but I would appreciate a second opinion for what I'm looking at with machines in my price range.

One option is 6 Cores, 3.46Ghz. The other is 12 Cores, 2.93Ghz.

I really like that I could get double the cores for the same price on the second machine, but don't know if it that would benefit my ProTools experience at all. I'm typically working as an editor, and do almost no live recording, but need to run a lot of plugins (iZotope RX5, Waves.) Faster bounce times would be a plus.

Any thoughts would be appreciated! Thanks!

If you're getting a cheese grater, definitely spring for the 12-core machine. The reason is that you can still upgrade the processors to a faster speed (there are several companies out there who do this conversion reasonably) if you find you don't quite have enough power. With the 12-core machine, you already have the right tray with the two-processor configuration. Taking a tray with only 1 processor all the way up to a two-processor configuration is a lot more expensive if you ever need to do that. I recently took my stock 8-core machine (2-2.4gHz processors) all the way up to a 12-core machine (2-3.46gHz) for less than $700. If I had only had a single processor tray (the 2.8gHz model, for example) the same upgrade would have been almost double the cost. My machine should be good for several more years now, and it is already 7 years old!