[LAU] Fwd: Hardware Choices

I apologize if this goes out twice, I sent the first copy to the wrong LAU address, forgot about the server switch. Ok so later this week I get the final paycheck that will enable me to upgrade my Linux box some. At the moment it is running a single, single-core 1.6 GHz Opteron with a gig of ram. It has two CPU sockets Assuming a budget of around $500 I can get either... 2x 2GHz Dual Core Opterons ($420) 1 More Cooling Fan for the second processor ($30-$40 for the Zalman I am looking at) and maybe another gig or two of ram. or... 1x 2.4 GHz Dual Core Opteron ($380) And at least a gig of ram And a possibility of another SATA HD I am curious as to people's opinions as to what will fit better. I believe I heard Jack (jackdmp?) could only take advantage of two cores right now? Which makes me wonder if the dual dual-core option is even worth it at the moment? I would imagine it would help by offloading WM and similar to a third core, but honestly running e17 and a dedicated audio workstation means I don't have to worry much about that. Would it help with multiple instances of Jamin even if jackdmp doesn't support more than 2 cores or should I just got with the single higher clock speed dual core processor? The first thing this would get used for: At the moment I have a project I am working on and hoping to finish up by the end of August (Sorry due to copyright issues I cannot release it to the list as much as I would love to). This project consists of 24 tracks at 24/96. I am pushing the single HD I have for it, but I might be able to rearrange it down to a smaller track count for most of it, and for the rest once it gets going it is fine when it caches the audio into memory. With the amount of plguins I am running though the CPU is getting pushed hard, and there probably won't get reduced to much, I am looking at moving around seperate vocalists to allow the use of Jamin's scene preset to use this instead of a single band compressor on some of the vocals, would require two instances, instead of individual single compressors and eqs on each vocalist, to help prevent me from having to reset every function on the compressors and eqs by hand repeatedly, the scene function is very nice and Jamin contains the Compressor and EQ I would be ptuting there anyways, but obviously draws more power. The vocalists come and go(Live theater performance recording, cast of 13), often individual or in duets to quads, but occasionally in a large full cast number as well, thus the using the scene function to allow me to get multiple vocalists on the same track and cut down on overall processing maybe, but also to cut down on overall track count in most places. Thanks in advance for the help. Seablade