faster dual core, or slower quad core?

I was going to buy a quad core a few months ago, but it seems that processor is no longer sold (don't remember the model number). So there are some dual core 3.3ghz ones at a reasonable price, but for that price I can only get a 2.6 in quad. Anything above that in quad, and the price seems to jump a lot, and 3.3ghz quads seem to be unavailable. So, should I get a faster ghz dual, or a slower ghz quad? I have a heap of stuff running in the background (stuff I need open), and was finally intending on being able to play games with this would-be rig.

Well my dual core @ 2.7ghz is way faster than my pentium 4 @ 4ghz. The quad core is probably going to be your best bet, especially since you have the background stuff opened as opposed to it being more so for gaming.

My q9550 goes to 3.53ghz with a voltage DECREASE and can even hit up to 4ghz without any effort. I think a good quad with OCing is way better than dual cores, but, only if you can utilize the cores. Everything I do except gaming uses my multicores. I am an extremely heavy multitasker and I produce music.

of your running lots of stuff go quad core, it will be smoother and frankly your games wont suffer THAT much from it as many will cry out.

A quad core would be a good investment, as well as a good OCer. The Q6600 is pretty cheap and with a good VID and cooling can OC like a beast.

your games wont suffer THAT much from it as many will cry out.

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Actually, from my experience, there won't be any suffering at all. Quads are great. A good Q6600, 9450 or 9550 will overclock well and crush whatever you can throw at it.

Dual core if you're mainly gaming, quad core if you run apps that take a whlie and benefit (video encoding, Photoshop, rendering, audio authoring) Or if you run multiple CPU intensive apps simultaneously. I bolded those words because you didn't make it clear but some people have the misperception that running lots of low CPU power background apps like IM, web browsers, audio playback etc with one main foreground app benefits from a quad core. That type of situation doesn't warrant a quad core because those apps take very little CPU power, it could benefit from more RAM though.

It also depends upon how long you'd like to keep it before upgrading anything.

Well games are starting to take use of quads now, notably GTA4, L4D, FO3, WoW, and WAR.

If the game is threaded for 1-2 cores, background processes such as Kernel&System, Music, and Anti-Virus can be done on the others

Actually, from my experience, there won't be any suffering at all. Quads are great. A good Q6600, 9450 or 9550 will overclock well and crush whatever you can throw at it.

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OMG! I forgot to add the most important consideration of all! If you buy a quad, you will be able to fold 4 WU's at a time when you joint the Rosetta team. Much better than just two.

Don't know how I let that happen?

Get a quad, and dual vid cards.. run 2 instances of F@H on the gpus, and 1 instance of the SMP version on the remaining cores.. GO TEAM 32

I'm new to games that are any more than a couple of years old, so I have no idea which ones use more than 1 core. I don't intend on overclocking as it can get pretty hot where I am. The only encoding I do is using virtualdub, and honestly, since it takes only about 20 mins out of my week, I just leave the pc alone. Mostly it's just things that use up a lot of ram, such as a lot of FF tabs open, lots of processes (several torrents, timed video capture, IM, firewall, temp logging). I have 512k down/128 up so folding isn't going to contribute much, especially when I use all the bandwidth I can get. Is a quad still for me (I intend on getting 4 minimum, 8gb max, ram)?

invictius said:

I don't intend on overclocking as it can get pretty hot where I am.

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On a Q9450 or 9550 you can prolly get to 3.2ghz without touching volts --> no increase in temp.

Personally, I suggest getting a quad, even for non-ultra-hard core gamers. An OC'd dual may net you an extra 5-10FPS in some games but overall the quad will serve you better. Besides it's got a longer potential shelf life, as now that i7 is out there will be more and more 2+ core coded apps. I suspect duals will be largely dead in 2-3 years.

For most people 8gigs of RAM is prolly overkill... 4gigs should be fine.

Invictus, Folding doesn't use your net connection, other than occasionally to get new work. it just uses idle proccessor clocks to work on a project, then turns it in when it's done. People fold on dialup, just have it dial in when it's done.

karkas said:

On a Q9450 or 9550 you can prolly get to 3.2ghz without touching volts --> no increase in temp.

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You will have a temp increase even without increasing voltage. As the frequency goes up, so does the power, but you won't have as sudden a jump as with increasing voltage as well.

Having said that, I still highly recommend overclocking whatever processor you decide on. Just keep an eye on temps and keep them below whatever number you wanted. They really are easy to OC and don't heat up as much as P4's did (if you don't go to extremes).

Burdman27911 said:

You will have a temp increase even without increasing voltage. As the frequency goes up, so does the power, but you won't have as sudden a jump as with increasing voltage as well.

Having said that, I still highly recommend overclocking whatever processor you decide on. Just keep an eye on temps and keep them below whatever number you wanted. They really are easy to OC and don't heat up as much as P4's did (if you don't go to extremes).

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Allow me restate... marginal if any increase in temperature. The NB will likely heat up more than the CPU, but even that is fairly insignificant imo.

karkas said:

Allow me restate... marginal if any increase in temperature. The NB will likely heat up more than the CPU, but even that is fairly insignificant imo.

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Yes, this is more likely.
I would change "marginal" to "noticeable/significant" if stock cooling is used however. If under water like I am, it made maybe a couple of degrees difference, I honestly couldn't tell you.

baditude_df said:

Yes, this is more likely.
I would change "marginal" to "noticeable/significant" if stock cooling is used however. If under water like I am, it made maybe a couple of degrees difference, I honestly couldn't tell you.

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I didn't notice any change on my 9450 and it runs hot as heck. However, I must confess I wasn't recording my temps under OC'd stock voltage stress tests...

duals oc higher - better for games and other programs only optimised for 2 cores.
on the other hand, if you go intensive video editing etc, or use programs optimised for 4 cores, get a quad.

i personally like duals more, as a lot of games are still on optimised for 2 cores. (and i play games lol). but remember, futureproofing quads will hold up better than duals.

I was torn between quad and dual myself just recently. I've had both and both have advantages and disadvantages. Price vs heat vs power draw.

I chose to go back to dual recently because I've been using one which is in my backup computer and it does 99% of what I use my PC for well enough. I'm limited in cooling since I can't fit the high-end tower coolers in the case I want to use and won't do water. I'm pinning my hopes on GPGPU apps coming to the forefront, especially for video encoding, with OpenCL imminent I hope the open source community develops high quality encoding for GPGPU similar to x264. That would only leave future-proofing for heavily multithreaded games but I don't game a ton. There are already games taht benefit from quad cores, SupCom, World in Conflict, and UT3 engine. I do like strataegy games so I hope the dual doesn't come back to bite me but it would take an epic all time great game of Half Life caliber for me to feel I went the wrong way. I do plan on keping the PC as is for a while, 2-3 years, if I was a hardcore gamer and not wanting to change for that long I'd go for a quad though with good cooling.