In my honest geeky opinion you should pick yourself out from the following catagories.

1. If you dont know what a dual core processor is, then the chances are you dont need on. A single core will do just as good if not better (you can afford faster) and a good formatting of your system to get rid of the cack you've been installing for the past however long.

2. If your still unsure, ask yourself what you use your computer for? If you've always got 2-3 programs open at a time that are activly running ... eg a browser that your activly browsing on at the time, with you virus checker checkin for viruses and listening to winamp .... Then you probably want a dual core processer ... My opinion on these .. Buy what you can afford. Pentium will always come up top when your on the top end of a high budget, however if your on a 'dont wanna spend a fortune' budget, then buy the best amd you can afford.

3. If your using it purely for games and thats what you want the power for, your looking at the wrong thing ... Get a top pentium single core processor, as much ram as will fit in your machine and as xpensive a nvidia card as you can afford.


Whats it all mean????

Dual/Single core:- Think of each core as a new phisical processor as thats what in effect it is ..... 2 processors can do 2 things ... Simple really

HT = hyperthreading (pentium) or hypertransport (amd):- 2 threads that can run through a single core (see above) and therefore can do 2 things at once at half the speed of your processors capability...


So in effect ... If you get an HT dual core processor you should be able to run 4 things at once without a massive performance hit. Provided you have enough memory, and in theory of course ...