i5 vs. i7 for Processor Hungry Program

[idata]

I'm looking for a new laptop to run a virtual guitar program called Guitar Rig 5. GR5 is a VERY processor-intensive program, and suffers from terrible delay and audio compression when run on my current i3 M350.

I'm looking at either a 2nd-gen i5 (2.5 GHz, Dual Core, 3MB L3 Cache) or a 2nd-gen i7 (2.2 GHz, Quad Core, 6MB L3 Cache). GR5 uses no more than two cores at once, so the need for quad cores is not an issue.

However, I'm confused if the 0.3 GHz faster processor of the i5 is more important than the extra 3MB of L3 cache on the i7, or vice versa. Thoughts?

[idata · Accepted solution]

The speed on both processors in indicated is almost the same (2.5GHz vs 2.2GHz); and the cache value is higher on the 2.2GHz processor (6MB while the other is 3MB). Knowing that the processors' speed is almost the same, the cache would be the one to let you know which could have a better performance: 2.2 GHz, Quad Core, 6MB L3 Cache.