technobear wrote:
the number of cores basically limits how many things your puter can do at once. So having 3 vs 2 merely means if the software you are using supports it, it will run on its own processor.
for example..
With a single core the processes have to switch on and off the processor and essentially share time.
With a dual core IE can use one core and then you can have Word run on the other core. and there will be less of a performance hit.
To explain further, the reason 3 or more cores aren't necessary for gaming is because so few (if any?) games utilize more than 2 cores. When you go from a 3Ghz dual core to a 2.6Ghz quad core, you're actually going to lose FPS.
Only splurge for triple/quad core if you're going to do other intensive tasks while gaming.
My Core 2 Duo E8400 (OC'd to 3.6Ghz) runs WoW on one 1920x1200 monitor while running Hulu full screen on my other 1920x1200 monitor while running bittorrent, chat programs, 300MB worth of Firefox tabs, etc. I even ran (2) WoW clients, one on each monitor for awhile w/out issue. It forces the FPS down to 30 on the non-focused screen.
You only NEED triple or quad core when games change or when you decide to run multiple instances of games (dual/quad boxing an MMO) or decide you want to encode HD video while gaming. Otherwise you're just pissing your money away on a sub-par gaming CPU that'll have tons of unused clock-cycles.
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