Fast machine for dev and emulation

[HCH]

So I'm thinking about moving from my Core 2 E4500 and Athlon 64 X2
5600+ for development to a nice new Core i7. Has anyone recently
moved from 1 to 2 year old hardware to the Core i7? Any feedback on
practical speed gains in deployment and debugging in the emulator?

 

[Simon Hart [MVP]]

Emulators are supper fast today compared to the old days and to be honest I
don't really see the difference between any of my machines. The fastest I'm
running on is a E8200 on my desktop, this is the spec:
http://www.simonrhart.com/2008/07/building-my-windows-vista-ultimate.html

Although I now have 4gb of 6400 DDR2 RAM.

Which is more than enough speed and power for me. It's more fast disk io and
memory the emulators need as opposed to CPU cycles.

Even running the emulators on some of the lastest netbooks like the Samsung
NC10 is acceptable.