Hey! Thanks, everyone, for sharing your thoughts on this. I had some thoughts and am wondering what you all think...
May main goal is to stick within the Mac family and build out a machine that will be able to handle loads of large sample library instruments for years to come.
I prefer the ability to write and preview without having to flatten as I enjoy making compositional and modulation changes throughout the entire process.
So here are my thoughts - if you have some technical feedback, would love to hear what ya'll think:
Processor
I think Mikb is right about the balance. $800 isn't much more for the additional cores, and the rest I think are overkill - I don't think Live would ever take advantage of them and considering the 10 cores are technically faster, the 10 core machine would probably run Live faster than 14 or 18.
My only question is can Live really can take advantage of the multi cores and if so, when exactly? The 8 core processors are even faster than 10, so should I really spend the extra $800? I'm not so sure I would actually feel a discernable difference here...
Memory
64 GB is a no brainer to support the sampled libraries. My major issue with 128 is it's stupid expensive (+2400!) - will it really make a difference? Is 64GB enough to take advantage of 40-50 samples instruments running at the same time?
Storage
2 TB is a no brainer. Can't justify paying an extra 2k for 2 more TBs (greedy apple!)
Graphics
I do love playing games in my free time, but I don't get to play nearly as much as I used to. I don't do as much video work these days, but I do quite a bit of heavy digital photography and compositing work. I think I'd be fine with the 8gb, but I'm wondering if it's worth the extra $600 in case I want to resell the machine...
@mikb - let us know what you find around the CPU throttling please
Cheers,
E