i would say amplitube sounds more real than the pod. although the differences aren't so big. you can get very good results with both.
with amplitube you're more flexible cause you can change the sound afterwards if you like. with the pod xt you record it as it is. except you get podfarm, which is a plugin like amplitube.

to avoid massive cpu usage you should freeze the tracks after recording.

It's not true that you have to record the Pod XT with an effect applied. It is quite easy to record a "dry" track while monitoring an effect of your choice. The downside of the XT and XT Live is that you cannot sync them with other soundcards so the XT has to be used as the sole soundcard while recording or re-amping. The XT Pro has SPDIF I/O so it does not have this limitation.

Of course this is not a comment on whether you would prefer Amplitube or the XT.

Thanks for the replies guys. I actually decided to try out Guitar Rig 4 and loved it! I managed to get some good sounds with a few of the amps in Amplitude (I really liked the Hot AC30), and I prefer it's work flow over Guitar Rig's. But it just seems like every amp I dial up in GR from clean to screaming just sounds really, really good. And to top it off, it's 64-bit as well.
Hey ouzo77, what did you mean by freezing the tracks?

By placing your guitar in refrigeration for several hours you can get really hot tracks!! Kidding, Cubase has the ability to freeze a track (check manual index.)
"Nuendo, Cubase SX, Logic and Sonar all offer track freezing to reduce plugin stress on CPUs. When you click on a track's Freeze button, the sequencer simply creates a mix of the track's audio with the current plugin settings and stores it as a temporary file on the disk as well as disabling the track's plugins. This enables the CPU to only have to worry about playing back the audio file--instead of crunching a ton of numbers to create the signal processing effects from the plugins.
The volume and panning adjustments of frozen tracks can still be tweaked, but further editing isn't available until the track has been restored to its unfrozen state, which is accomplished simply by clicking on the freeze track button again." Quote from Gearwire.
These amp sims are huge CPU hogs so running them in real time while say recording another track can easily overload the system, it is not a bad idea to freeze any track with plugins that you don't need to tweak anymore.

Thanks jg49. I've been running 3 instances of GR, 1 of EZ drummer and also various plugs including a convolution verb before my comp starts acting up. But that's probably going to be more and more of a normal setup for me. This will help out alot!

MrEase, post: 300341 wrote: It's not true that you have to record the Pod XT with an effect applied. It is quite easy to record a "dry" track while monitoring an effect of your choice. The downside of the XT and XT Live is that you cannot sync them with other soundcards so the XT has to be used as the sole soundcard while recording or re-amping. The XT Pro has SPDIF I/O so it does not have this limitation.

oh, i didn't know that the pod xt can be used as an interface...

jg49 said all about freezing tracks. it's very handy when you use many plugins.

guitar rig 4 seems very nice, too. i already thought about upgrading komplete 5 to 6 just to get guitar rig 4. the cool thing is, the upgrade will cost me as much as gr4 alone. gotta save some cash...

Thanks for the advice on track freezing guys! I have one tune that went from using 50% cpu power to 10-15%.
-ouzo77, are the other VI's on Komplete as good as Guitar Rig?

the native instruments stuff are great plugins. kontakt by itself is worth the money.
it's definitely worth considering, because the whole bundle is a real bargain.