I think the comparison with less cores vs. more cores usually relates to that you may be giving up some cpu clock speed when choosing a dual core over a single core cpu or quad core over a dual core, particularly if you are talking about similarly priced processors. For example, if you could get either a 3.0 GHz dual core or a 2.0 GHz quad core for about the same price, which do you think would be the best choice if buying it for games? In this example, the dual core would be better because the games would be running on a much faster cpu core than on the quad core. This of course applies only to games that have at most 2 threads for most of the processing (or for dual core vs single core, games with at most 1 major thread), with threads that do only a minor amount of work not taken into consideration.

Oh, and btw, single-threaded apps don't just magically run as if they were multithreaded on any OS/CPU combination I know of. They can only run on one processor core at a time, though the OS may sometimes be switching which core the program is running on.

Yeah, I was gonna say this, any of my older games that I play, doesn't matter if it's on Vista or XP, or even Windows 7, if they only run on a single thread, I'll see one processor shoot up to 100% usage, while the other stays completely unused. However, almost any older game should be able to run on a single E8X00, so that's not really much of a problem, and most of the newer games that require the speed are multithreaded.

Here, I'll give of an example of the difference: Sims 2 and Sims 3, Sims 2 runs MUCH less smoothly than Sims 3 on my computer, if I check the process it actually is multithreaded, with 15 threads, however, the majority of these are for little things, like audio. Looking at the threads, I see a single thread that is doing almost all of the processing, and here's how my CPU usage looks:


Notice how one graph is almost always maxed, this is the processor that has the main thread of the game, the thread that seemed to be doing all the work. The other processor is doing work, the majority of which is from Sims 2, however, as you can see, unlike the other graph, it keeps wasting processing power, while the other processor maxes out, causing lag in-game, as it waits for one processor to finish doing the work, even though there's plenty of processing ability being wasted on the other processor.

Now, I run Sims 3 on my computer, and it is SO much smoother, even though the game runs a seamless town, no loading screens, and slightly improved graphics. If I look into the threads on the process, there are 19 threads, however, unlike Sims 2, I see 2 threads doing most of the work, both doing about equal amounts, rather than a single thread, and a third thread, which I'm pretty sure controls the GUI of the game, which makes it so that even though the simulation is lagging, my interface is as smooth as ever. Here's how the CPU usage looks running Sims 3:


Now, unfortunately, unlike Sims 2, the Sims 3 does not have an option to simulate while the window is down, so the CPU percent on the left is a bit off, but you can see from the graphs of both CPUs that the processing is being shared, and both are being used very close to their limit.

This basically shows you that it not only matters whether a process is multithreaded at all, but whether or not the makers of the game multithreaded the game properly. The main advantage of OSes like Vista is slightly more intelligent dividing of threads between processing, in order to share the work more, and mostly that they are much more capable of using Duo/Quad cores effectively.

Here's a good article that discusses this.

Of course, if games don't use more than 2 main threads yet, dual core processors would currently be better for those than a quad core of the same price, because of what I mentioned about that it would have a higher clock speed than the quad core, and that the other 2 cores might not be used much for the game on the quad core.

to the op,

from a gaming perspective, you're going to see a HUGE improvement going from a single core to a dual core. all(and i feel pretty confident saying this) modern games support at least dual threading. it is WELL worth the money...now....the difference from dual-core to a quad-core is MUCH smaller.

ps, going from 1GB to 4GB is hugely spectacular. TRUST US on this!! you will NEVER regret making the switch.

On RAM:

Could someone tell me whatever the hell Cas Latency, Timing (e.g. 5-6-6-18) and Speed (e.g. DDR2 1066) is?
In addition, how can these factors affect overall PC performance?

Lower latency is usually possible at lower speeds. It works in tiers sort of. Like DDR2 667 is 2 channels of 333. If it is 667 at 4-4-4-12 than it is equal to DDR2 800 @ 5-5-5-15. Also it isn't always like that, especially with DDR3 which can be 6-7-6-18 or 7-7-6-20 ect. Low latency at a high speed is ideal but is not easy to do. I try to find 5-5-5-15 in 1066, 4-4-4-12 in 1066 would be the lowest latency you'd find without a huge price tag.

Latency/memory timings basically have to do with how many clock cycles the memory controller has to wait from when it issues commands to the RAM until it can expect the command to have completed. The length of each clock cycle is inversely proportional to the clock frequency that the RAM is operating at (clock cycle length = 1 / clock frequency). For DDR RAM, the clock frequency is actually half of the number they typically state. This clock frequency and the memory timings are related to how many operations the RAM can do per second.

The names of the memory timings have to do with different stages in the process of reading or writing data in RAM.

IIRC, the memory timings generally affect overall PC performance at most in single digit percentage points.

Also, when comparing memory timings between different clock speeds of RAM, be sure to remember that the numbers aren't on the same scale if the speed isn't the same. As I mentioned above, the numbers are clock cycles, the length of which are dependent on the clock speed.

well i've switched from a single core 3.0 1 gig ram to a dual core 2.4ghz with a 4 gig ram. i noticed the difference immediately. i start my comp and it boots up in like, 1/10 of the time it took my old comp. i can multitask a lot easier too, the extra ram really keeps my comp from lagging.

Now this is the simple response I was looking for.

now...if you were to buy the new equipment, you would realize that everyone else's mentions were just as accurate.

In the past, lower timings were considered better than a higher clock. However, now it's pretty much clock. Obviously lower timings means better ram, but much like most hardware, these timings can be manually set in the bios or left to the manufacturer's default value.

As for the 1->4GB comparison, I must say I was impressed with the stability of Oblivion after going from 1 GB to 2 GB (2 sticks in single channel). However, going from 2->4 I don't think there will be much improvement, due to my inability to use more than 1 GB at any given time. If I use more, my processor can't keep up.

Finally K8 > P4. It's funny how things change so fast in the hardware industry. I'm especially glad to see the phenom IIs and the am3 socket doing so well.

As for your speed difference: consider this.
Northwood 2.6 GHz celeron + Radeon 9250 was my old comuter. My new one is a Windsor 2.2 GHz Athlonx2 + Radeon x1950 pro. It's 10x as fast, easily, mostly due to how much Intel sucked in 2002 when I got the computer.
I expect you'd get ~10x as fast as well, so long as you pair it up with a cheap 4670 or something. The OS response won't be noticeable, but the amount of time it takes to do intensive processes WILL be.

You can run the Sims 3 in a window, you know.