I have to be the only person on earth who upgraded from a computer as ancient as my Athlon 64 2800 to an Intel Quadcore Q8200. According to various benchmarks I've read online, it appears my Quadcore is between 9 and 14 times faster than my previous computer. With my previous computer I could get maybe 1-2 instances of Amplitude if I had 10-12 tracks of drums with typical processing at 160 samples latency before I ran into problems with glitches and such. With the Quadcore I got bored after tossing 8 instances up and I wasn't anywhere near close to maxing out the processor.

1. It's been so amazing that it makes we want to mix more.
2. When I record, I dramatically less time fighting my computer.
3. I can be as creative as I want to and my brain doesn't need to divert a junk of its energy to CPU economics.
4. New possibilities have opened up that have an outstanding effect on the recordings I'm cranking out.
5. I don't have to bother freezing tracks, committing tracks to wav files, etc. No time is wasted going through the various tactics to save CPU power.
6. Loading up drum samples such as Superior Drummer 2.0 takes a fraction of the time. The difference between 8 seconds and 60 seconds is outstanding when you are in creative mode.
7. Because I no longer have to wait 60 seconds for samples to load, my studio is way messier. I spend less time cleaning and more time rocking!
8. Creativity Viagra – Nothing kills the moment like a computer that can't keep up with the action. I find that I can work and work and work without losing my creative edge.
9. The price of upgrading was cheap. I paid less than $400 and that included upgrading my previous 60GB C: drive up to a 750GB drive.
10. Utilities even run faster. Programs such as Razorlame, my MP3 conversion software, run about 10x faster.