Well first of all I don't know if DxO supports multi CPUs but I expect it.
The very first question which always comes to my mind is how much do you want to spend. I find a disscussion before that a little sense less. ....
- CPU I wouldn't spend the money on workstation Xeon CPUs or a extrem edition of a Core i7. You can save already nearly 500 bucks by choosing a cpu which is not the top end at the moment. (The performance lost would most of the time be less than 5%)
That is all a great lead in to these type of discusions.
Personally, I like to hold back a couple of steps from the "bleeding edge", premium pricing/premium performance level.
That last 5% to 10% of performance just is not worth th extra 100% to 200% in cost - in most cases - to me. (It usually is in the design mode, like when you buy a car. You start out with a basic box at $200 and "inch up" to a $5,000 box. Then reality sets in when you have to balance the budget and still eat, buy a camera, pay studio rent ...)
Specifically, if you look at the retail price points on the i7 processors, the "base level" 920 is $250, the "mid level" 950 is $500, and the "higher end" 975 is $1,000 (roughly, as proxy numbers, ignoring deals, etc.)
So is the extra performance of he 970 "worth" 4x as much as the 920? For some people, yes. But if you look at the overall spectrum of "usable" processors - from dual core to the Xeon, etc. - the incremental increase is small compared to going from the dual core 4200, for example, to the i7.
Here are som,e benchmark numbers:
[blockquote]
T4200 - 1,239
i7 920 - 5,442
i7 950 - 6,231
i7 975 - 7,202[/blockquote]
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.htmlThere is another thread where folks are discussing $4K laptops for medium format tethered, but the same basic argument/discussion that is raised more explicitly here.
Cheeers! Just back from one trip, 2 days home and I have to go again ... no time to actually buy or use things .... or do anything useful.
Best,
Michael