Originally Posted by shadeofnardogray

I'd say "it really depends what you're doing with it" - for high power applications, the last i5 is an amazing base setup. On the street, manuals are fun, nostalgic, and pleasantly involving for the driver. Track situations though, you tend to want the car in the right gear without your hands leaving the wheel or something else deciding what is "right." To that end, DSGs (DCTs in general) are godsends. I have an '08 R32 and '19 TTRS standing out front - both of those setups are much faster than you or i will ever be at changing gears. The old stuff runs wet clutch providing very smooth engagement (GTR does too, but with my setup its like rough intercourse with a transformer until the trans and clutch fluids warm up), the new 7-spd units are just insanely precise dry setups and the entire tuning strategy is driveline based (vs motor based like normal cars) to ensure smooth upshifts (downshifts are always torque-cut at the motor, upshifts keep partial torque down so that you keep the boost aside from efficiency).
If you're going for road courses, the TTS is probably a better choice - those motors can be brought to modern TTRS levels of output for short money and if thats not enough for you on a road course at that weight, you're into purpose built cars or ultra-expensive kit anyway. If you're shooting for digs or roll racing, and competing in the manual class (no DCTs), i'd say the older TTRS will offer a lot more resistance to blowing up all over the place and you can get the transmission innards nowadays to handle 1k pretty easily. Unlike Cobras or Nismos, there's little "baller factor" from a TTRS since nobody knows what the deuce it is - does come in handy though when someone thinks they can outrun a "hair dressers faux coupe" :-p