Observations: Quad core ain’t doing squat for most new PC games (which aren’t multi CPU aware, yet) . Hell, my Core 2 duos aren’t being used efficiently in my MMO’s either. Multiple cores are boon for multitaskers though. I usually have my browser with multiple tabs with adobe flash running, image editor, media player on while playing my fave games on without a performance hit. Just make sure you’ve got enough RAM to feed your procs.

Ok, so should you upgrade?

If you’ve got a old pentium 3 pc, upgrade NOW. As in run to your friendly neighborhood PC shop and get one of these babies and slap it onto a new rig setup. Thank me later…

If you’ve got an old Pentium 4 (2 years or more), then it depends on what you wanna do with your PC. If your old PC is sluggish, make sure you have 1GB of ram installed. It may also be a good time to reformat that drive. I have a first gen 2.4Ghz p4 and an athlon xp 2500 still running smoothly on Windows XP, even while gaming.

Pentium 4 3.0′s and later – Probably wanna upgrade if you want to push those framerates on those games (although pair your proc with a good Videocard). or for faster video encoding for apps that use multi cores.

Dual Cores – Either you need the extra cores for server processing duties or you have lots of cash to blow. or you want faster video encoding (assuming your application supports 4 cores).

Remember: Get at least 1GB of ram of the fastest memory clockspeed your mobo supports. If you can afford it, get 2GB or more. Especially if you’re gonna use Windows Vista.