The faster the speed of your CPU, the faster it'll handle tasks like rendering (effects processing/exporting wav stems). So mostly people who want high speed rendering (online/offline) would choose the first CPU.
But since you want more VSTs running at once, I think having more cores is better for you. However, it comes with a catch— you won't be able to run gigantic VSTs at once though...or even one! (I doubt there are any plugins THAT gigantic though)
Soooo I think...go for more cores! But keep in mind that too many online (inside DAW) pitch shifting, vocoding etc won't work well (it'll take a moment to finish) due to the slower speed. ? Reverbs, delays, compressors etc etc should work fine, but you might have to wait a bit for pitch changes and vocoder changes to complete before you can playback the audio.
Hope that helps!