Quad cores are more future proof. Applications in the future will take advantage of quads, so you'll find you won't have to change processors for awhile.

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End of Story.

Photoshop takes advantage of quad-core processor, but it's more focused on the RAM. You'll be able to apply effects to an image faster with a quad-core chip than a dual-core, but RAM is the real thing that will help Photoshop run better.

Most games are not optimized for more than two (if that) cores either. There are a few upcoming games that are touting quad-core optimization, but quite a few past games that claimed that didn't show any marked improvements between quad and dual-core chips (Crysis, Supreme Commander, and a few others).

That being said, if you're not the type that upgrades frequently, I'd definitely opt for a quad-core chip over a dual-core if at all possible. There's a big race between AMD and Intel for multi-core chips right now, it's like the new Gigahertz. We're definitely going to see lots of work on optimizing applications for more than one or even two cores, so having a quad-core processor will give you a longer-lasting machine than a dual-core chip will.

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Dusted.

Hmm. Good to consider.

Also, would I be hurting myself if I stick with XP Pro instead of going to Vista?

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Those who travelled far away from home, they'll never return
and those who crossed the seas of hope, they all will burn

Correction, no game handles SMT/SMP because it's not thread safe. The only game that ever attempted it was Quake III Arena and it was a dismal failure. The only time games utilize it is in dedicated server mode where they are thread safe.

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_{Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem}

I've checked prices, and I can get a good solid quad-core Intel for about the same price as a higher-end Core 2 Duo, give or take a few $.

Thanks for your input.

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Those who travelled far away from home, they'll never return
and those who crossed the seas of hope, they all will burn

Eh? You're going to have to elaborate a bit further there - how is a game not "thread safe"? I'm not poking fun, I'm seriously asking.

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Dusted.

The only chips from Intel that I'd be looking at right now for a medium-high end machine are the E8k series and Q9k series. If you're looking at E6k or Q6k chips, I'd forget about them.

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Dusted.

In order for a process to utilize multiple cores, it has to fork itself into separate child processes successfully to utilize each core harmonously. Doing this with games has too many adverse effects to make it viable. What happens currently is all the background system processes shift to one core (usually the primary) and the game shifts to the secondary core to isolate itself (assuming it uses RDTSC and TSC correctly, since most don't tools like the AMD Dual Core Optimizer and the Intel Dual Core Optimizer exist to force the application to do so)

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_{Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem}

And no game developer has found a way to do this properly yet? I was under the impression that several companies already had a system like that in place.

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Dusted.

The issue stems with memory allocation, when you get into multithreading it gets tricky (especially with C++)

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_{Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem}