New machine for compiling designs

[Altera_Forum]

I'm about to buy a new box to act as my new build machine for Quartus II. 

 I have the option of choosing 1 of the following 2 options:   Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E8500 with VT (3.16GHz, 6M, 1333MHz FSB)  or  Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9400 with VT (2.66GHz, 6M, 1333MHz FSB)   What do you think would be faster?  More cores? or a faster clock speed?

[Altera_Forum]

My experience has been that multiple cores don't really help when compiling in Quartus. This may be design dependent, but I would probably go with the faster clock speed if Quartus was my only concern. 

 On the other hand, when compiling Nios code, the extra cores generally make a big difference. For example, running "make -j4" to use four cores can be almost four times as fast as using one core.

[Altera_Forum]

Nota Bene : Quartus II Web Edition uses only one core. So no interest to multiple core in this case. 

 Hyper threading could improve performance. CPU with high cache will help a lot. RAM : huge size, prefer QDR (faster than DDR)...  I suggest you to see requirements by quartus for targeted fpga : they are different for each FPGA size and class. see literature page on www.altera.com For high FPGA, I think that you must have 64bits hardware and operating system.  Regards.