Hey guys,
I'm finally making the switch from PC to MAC after many years and was after some advice.

Do I really need the latest whizz bang i7 for music production? Money's a little tight right now and I'm tossing up options.

Have you noticed much of a difference working with an i5?

Also RAM wise, do you think 8 GB or 16 GB?

I used to work on a i7 pc with 16gb of RAM but I think it might have been a bit of overkill.

I use a lot of Ableton native FX with the occasional VST (prefer to render to audio even when I do)

Do you reckon I could get away with an i5?
Cheers!

still working on a 2010 macbook pro, dual core 2.3Ghz (pre i3) I think... 8 Gbyte ram. It is getting a bit long in the tooth now and can struggle but just flatten tracks if need be. If money is tight go for the i5, should be plenty powerful enough for studio work.

I was using an i7 PC set up with 8gbs of RAM and i was pushing it with my productions on some occasions.
I recently upgraded my memory to 16gbs and i find it helps a lot.

I had a macbook pro too for producing on the go or at work during my break but i ended up not really using it, for me i preferred my studio PC and big monitor etc, it just works for my work flow and eventually sold my Macbook pro.

If you maintain your PC and have a good file system and drive speeds for your files then i think your ok with an i7 16gb PC.
but if your into live performing and all that then your prob best off switching to the mac for the performance reliability....at the end f the day its different strokes for different folks.

Thanks guys. I'm getting into live gigs now so stability is exactly what im after. My PC laptop also lacked a certain robustness as well