All else being equal, which system is better/faster:

Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors

or a

Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors

Thanks!

better hm buy the best video card and the most memory and as much disk space at 7200

agree...for all the apps I run, the processor speed isn't as important as RAM, video card, and hard drive speed.

I have the 8 core Nehalem 2.66 and it's ridiculously fast BUT, 16 gb RAM, ATI 4870 video card and all 7200 rpm drives are what makes AE and Motion run like champs!

All valid points, but he stipulated: all else being equal. He's asking about raw processor power, and it's a good question.

Here's a chart that has all this info: PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - Multiple CPU Systems (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html)

The chart shows them being virtually identical if I have the model numbers right.

When I put together my editing rig a couple of years ago, I took these scores and divided them into the price of the CPU to come up with a bang-for-the-buck score, and made my decision based on that.