As I see it, anyone who wants to build a computer today needs to make a choice: should it be built to be as fast as possible without regard to the number of cores or should it have as many cores as possible without clockspeed being a priority? In other words, should it be tall or wide?
If you want to go tall, it seems to me that you should buy the most expensive dual core chip you can find and then overclock it as far as it will go. If you could get a dual core up to 4.6 GHz you would have a fast machine indeed. Couple this with fast memory and a Raptor RAID 0 set up or even a flash drive and you have raw speed. Of course with only 2 cores, it’s not wide. But do you need it to be wide?
On the other hand, if you buy a Skulltrail motherboard and put 2 quadcore chips on it, then you’ve got something that’s wide. You have 8 cores! Even with overclocking, you probably won’t be able to get to the same speed as the overclocked dual cores. However, if the software you’re using can handle multicore processing, this computer with smoke the dual core system using that application.
But there aren’t that many programs that can use quadcore chips effectively. Today, it would seem that you’re better off with a fast dual core than spending crazy money on a quad or dual quad system. This won’t always be the case, but for probably the next 6 months. It’s true.
Mental Interface 