dual core or quad core question

First a little background. I'm fairly computer literate and have no problems building my own system. I've got a really old system and its showing its age. I'm looking to upgrade. I'm looking at motherboard/cpu/ram along with a new video card & power supply and I've got my eye on a shiny new case as well. My main question is what will serve me better: a dual-core processor in the 3.2G range or a quad-core in the 2.3G range? This is just my home system but I do a fair bit of gaming. I don't need the best of the best but I would like something that will hold up for a few years without the need to upgrade for a while.

Also if anyone has any recommendations on mbd/cpu combos I wont turn them down

EDIT: Here is a list of the components I am looking at buying. It's been a while since I've shopped for parts so could you tech gurus look through and tell me if you see any problems?

MBD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131324
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103234
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231122
Video Card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102770
PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139005
Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811103010

I have a 22" samsung syncmaster 2232 lcd monitor (if that's important.)

Depending on your budget, you might want to look at the new i7 processors and x58 processors. Core2 processors are cheaper, and a great deal, but the performance of the i7s is a big step up. All i7s are currently quads, with the cheapest one at 2.66ghz.

A faster dual core will support you better in things like gaming. Most games are written to utilize only one core, so the extra cores will only serve you in multitasking things besides your game.

If you do things besides games, such as video editing, photoshop, and other programs designed to use multicore processors, 4 cores should be a big jump.

Keep in mind also, as new games come out, its more likely they will be able to better utilize multiple cores. It is just the current gen ones that mostly use 1 core.

A dual-core at 3.2GHz will generally perform better for gaming than a quad-core at 2.3GHz. However, the quad would be better for any of various working tasks, even at the lower clock speed. If you don't want to spend a lot of money on a Core i7 system right now, and if you don't want to wait until later this year to build a Core i5 quad-core system, I would suggest going with a Core 2 Duo build with a CPU clock speed of around 3.4-3.6GHz (overclocking if necessary). If you've survived this long with what you describe as a "really old" system, that will serve you well for some time to come, assuming you don't care too much about keeping up with the latest games (it'll handle Crysis, Far Cry 2, and the like fine, but a couple of game generations down the line, quad will probably be the standard requirement; if that's a problem for you, wait until this Fall and build a Core i5 system). Plus, it's fairly inexpensive to build an excellent Core 2 Duo machine these days, which is always a plus when trying to balance cost and power.

Also, Wrath, plenty of current games utilize dual-core processors (some even require them), and some older ones have been optimized to make use of a second core. The days of the single core are pretty much gone, by this point.

Heh....il be honest, Guild wars was the most recent "higher-budget" game iv played (sometimes get on f2p mmos) .
I mostly stick to consoles. My computer is so old and gimpy

If you want to save cash, go Socket775, get a decent mobo and Q6600 and overclock the hell out of it. It can usually take it, even on the standard intel cooler. Or live with it at 2.4GHz, it's not actually all that slow.

Alternately, go i7 and feel like you wasted a big chunk of money when the new range launches in less than a year (i think).

I'd either wait and get the next product line, or go cheap and get Socket775 now and get a new one in a year. Core i7 seems a waste.

Whatever you do, a Quad core usually feels much faster than a dual core. Virus scan, anti-malware scan, and 2 copies of GW without the slightest jerkiness, now that's FTW.

I won't offer comments on AMD because I've not actually looked at them in a good long while.

If I were you, I'd get a phenom II CPU with an AM2+ mobo. Great bang for your buck.
A Phenom II 810 or 920 are great CPU's.

Game-wise though, only a few games so far support more than 2 cores, and one game alone relies heavily on a great quadcore CPU (GTAIV). Other than that, a Core 2 Duo 8400/8500/8600 is probably the best dualcore CPU outhere atm.

quadcore is the shiznits for multi-tasking.... My one computer has a 3.1ghz dual core CPU and my other has a 2.5ghz quad core. The quad core both "feels" and IS much faster for accomplishing many tings at once, which I need to be able to do in my line of work. The quad core is noticeably quicker in video editing and graphics processing. I can edit a video, listen to tunes, have half a dozen web pages running, download files and not hit 50% core capacity, while the dual core is at 90% or more. HOwever, for gaming, there's no real advantage, but it's no slouch either, a very small loss in performance, if any.

I got an e8400 and its doing great

A Phenom II 940 or 920 is a much better option than a Q6600. And the 720 BE is a way better option than any 775 dual core price/peformance wise.

+1 Phenom II. Best performance/dollar right now for gaming.

Building for the future is a speculator's game. There aren't many well-threaded apps right now, so those going quad 'for the future' are basically betting that multicore usage becomes widespread before their next upgrade. Whether this is a good bet depends a great deal on how often you upgrade, as well as the rate of mainstream adoption and overall market conditions (pretty much impossible to predict). For the record, many people in the Core 2 days argued that heavily multithreaded apps would be mainstream by now - it hasn't happened.

Dual-core wins for the time being simply because they tend to clock higher and have more cache/core at the same price point. However, dual-core on Intel platforms is a problem for people with long upgrade cycles because the 775 is a dead-end platform; this is one big reason for why people are jumping straight to i7 despite not really needing (or even benefiting from) it today. AMD doesn't really have this issue.

I would agree that AMD Phenom II is the best bang for your buck right now (OVERALL). If you want to get the best future value for your dollar, be it gaming, multi-tasking, or just general useage, then I think this is the way to go.

*my 2 cents*

What I'd like to add to this post is, compare prices of the e8400 and the q8200. e8400 is often used by gamers, coz of its GhZ range. The quad has great performance, and is actually cheaper. This may be an eyeopener

kind of an old thread here but i thought it put my thoughts in anyways in case you haven't upgraded yet. I've done alot of research for my own upgrade and every test that I have seen shows that the core 2 duos have a significant advantage over the new phenoms when playing games. Obviously if you run alot of apps that can use 4 cores then that is the way to go but if games are mostly what you are doing then a core 2 is the way to go. Either the e7400 or an e8400. check out tomshardware.com and bit-tech.net and you will see.

are you talking about the phenoms, or phenom IIs? 'cause the phenom IIs will generally tie for performance for your typical core 2 quad at the same price points. indeed, if you want to go AMD, the phenom II x3 720 has shown to be very good, even better than the E8400. it equals the E8400 in single threaded apps, and obviously beats the E8400 in anything that has more than two threads.

To be honest the best bang for buck processor you can get is still the q6600, it has a high multi and can easily clock to 4ghz on a strong water loop. Its a 65nm quad. you need to pay a fair bit more to get a 45nm quad with the same multi, and thus are more FSB hungry - but if you running at stock speeds none of this really matter! 45nm processors have better clock for clock efficiency.

The best thing about phenom II's is they dont have a coldbug, you can cool down to -200 and they will still boot, where as intel chips you need to control the temp sometimes as high as -50 before you boot, and normally dont really go any lower than -120. Doesnt really matter if you not sticking it under a cascade or LN2.

Check out websites like www.benchtec.co.uk or www.xtremesystems.com these are overclocking and benchmarking forums, which are full of loads of useful information with regards to CPUs.

I have a q6600 running at 4ghz in one pc and a e8500 running at 5ghz. I prefer gaming on the duel core purely becusae of the MHZ and the lack of multi core usage.

I7's run hot, are expensive, but do have 8 logical cores, running from 4 physical cores, which means they have 8threads - they also have a built in memory controller and run triple channel memory - which means ddr3 is 3 stick sets, as 3gb, 6gb etc etc. This means the memory side of the platform is far superior to anything else, and does make a huge difference. I was playing around with a 965 extreme processor on a Rampage II Extreme last weekend and the performance blew me away.

The main advantage of the dual-cores is their high overclocking headroom.

The best thing about the Phenom 2s is that they're cheap and fast. Coldbug doesn't matter to anyone who actually wants to use their machine for something other than benchmarking competitions; nobody runs LN2 for 24/7 operation - hell, most people won't even touch phase-change for day-to-day use.

You also don't need to run triple-channel memory with i7. In fact, repeated testing has shown no significant benefit from running triple-channel because memory bandwidth is not a bottleneck on the x58/i7 platform.