I am replacing my laptop and found another HP that I'm hoping will be as good (hopefully much better) than my current one  which has been great and is a 1st Generation Core i7. This new one is a 6th Gen Core i7.
 
I have a few questions:
 
1) Will a 6th gen perform A LOT better with SONAR than my 1st gen?
2) Do I have to do a full install of my old versions of SONAR to be able to get all my old plugins (Sonitus, Blue Tubes, etc.) and Synths that came bundled with different versions of SONAR?
 
Here are some specs on the new Laptop:
 

• Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ (2.6 GHz, up to 3.5 GHz, 6 MB cache, 4 cores) + NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M (4GB GDDR5 dedicated)
• 1TB 7200 rpm SATA + 128GB M.2 SSD

       16GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (2 x 8GB)

• 17.3" diagonal FHD IPS UWVA anti-glare WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)
• Windows 10 Home 64
• SuperMulti DVD burner

 

You can see what's included with Platinum here:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/Versions
 
If that's not everything that you need then you'll have to reinstall individual plugins from previous versions.
 
Note that if you want to use V-Vocal then you will have to do a minimal installation of a version that includes it - it's not a vst

When running the old SONAR installers, immediately after the serial number screen is the basic/advanced install option. Select the advanced install option. The advanced option provides a checklist of components to install. Deselect everything, then select what you want to install. As mentioned above, V-Vocal requires a minimal SONAR install. This is an option in a drop down at the top of the advanced install checklist.

You can get a rough feel for benchmarks from the CPU alone, but can also download passmark's benchtest. CPUs are at this link:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html

The benchtest software will yield better results though.

Bundled plugins will be fine, but you may have to re-run installers and re-authorize some third-party plugins. In some cases (e.g. Waves, or any others whose licenses are keyed to hardware) you may have to de-activate your old licenses first. You may also have to copy over custom templates and presets from the old laptop. 

Wow, looks like the new processor smokes my old one. Hope this test translates well into the real world and SONAR.

Thanks scook, bit, Bristol and mettelus!

Going from a 1.6 Core i7 to a 2.6 and from 6 gb of RAM to 16 should I see an improvement in latency with the same USB 2.0 interface or is latency tied more to the interface itself?

The interface latency you can control is set by the buffer size and sample rate. If the new machine can run with a lower buffer size and/or higher sample rate the latency will be lower.

Thanks, Scook!