I've been going over this for like a week now thinking which one is the best to buy. The Intel Dua Core 2 2x3.16 Ghz or the Intel Quad Core extreme 4x2.66 ghz. I'm looking to buy the new pc next week and money isnt an option. I really dont want to make a mistake of buying the wrong pc. So what do you think?.

I have some knowledge on both. Both argue over which is better. Both have their strengths. Which one to choose is the question?

The real question is what are you going to be using it for? If you need to work with many applications open at the same time then a Quad would be better but if not then Duo would be just fine.

Soon there wil be software to take advantage of multi-core technology. So, go with quad-core with higher FSB speed. You may have to get the x64 OS....even though some old programs may not work....

Well mainly for gaming. Just wondered which performs better.

Duo would be enough for gaming. Just get a very good video card to go along with the duo processor. NVidia and Raedon make excellant cards.

Check out AMD going to sell teraflop scale video cards for $199. They have 3 new classes - good, better and best. Buy the new ones which will have better value for the money. I think they will start selling them end of this month....

Get as much SDRAM as your MOBO can hold as well.

Some of the newer games are taking advantage of 4 cores now, but for the most part a dual core is enough. Personally I'd take the dual core with a higher clock speed over a quad core. It'll be a couple more years before the extra cores really makes a difference.

Usually games will be bottlenecked by the graphics card before the processor anyway, and ATI's new 4800 series is supposed to be very good. Reviews should be hitting the web any day now.

Take a look through this article from guru3D:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/

I heard there was no real reason to buy a quad core right now, as almost nothing is written for it. And as long as it's taking for 64 bit stuff to come out...I plan to wait, and just get a fast dual core.