right.  there is no simple way in windows to dedicate cores to a process.  most windows processes will hit cpu 0 the hardest and i've seen spikes in sonar on that cpu in unexpected places at unexpected times.  from what i've read this might have something to do with the integrated ibm graphics chipset that's on my laptop but i haven't narrowed it down yet...
 i don't have a problem right now running 135 audio tracks on the last 4 cores with several prochannel modules on and automated eq, coming in at about 50% utilization, which is fine.  the other thing that i need to look at is piping all the data via networked midi running on maybe 3 machines so i don't have to run it all of the daw machine - which is an accident waiting to happen. 

FWIW, here's a program called "Process Lasso" that can aid in tuning and balancing CPU usage as well as hard-set affinity settings per program.

I just bought a motherboard with more procs than any DAW should need and let er rip. 12 cores and I sleep peacefully at night.

i'm still saving for this!

I find all of this quite interesting.
I just jumped into a basic workstation which can be upgraded to two 8c Xeon Proc and 64gb Ram for each (128g total); (just starting with one 4c Xeon and 20gb ram). But I am setting it up for OS on first drive & DAW/Audio on second so it seems just as reasonable that if I could at least specify what program uses each processor without getting into the individual cores, then I'm very interested to hear more specifics (maybe with less math detail and more hands on edits to do it). 
So yeah, I'm glad this got thrown out to the community!

cool little system you have there!!  how do you find the xeons working out for you??  i've heard they can be a bit finicky to work with.  what kind of work are you going to be doing with it?  if you're doing orchestral simulations with vsl can you share some feedback?

What I like about the Xeons (I have the E5-1620) is that you get the power of the i7, you don't get onboard graphics because you don't need it,
and you can run ECC memory.