We talked in a recent post about some of the benefits of the now fairly common Core 2 Duo processor. Computer salesman will always be keen to sell you double this and quadruple that, and the Core 2 Duo helps their cause with its dual processors on one unit. So the Quad core is obviously even better with four processors rather than just the two, or is it?

A Quad Core processor is actually essentially the same deal as the Core 2 Duo except that it now it has an additional two processors on the one unit making four in all. As with Duo this provides some substantial benefits over a single processor for the user, especially in the areas of multitasking, such as running a number of programs at once, as each of the processors can handle different things at the same time. But the big question is whether the move to four from two provides and real gains in efficiency and power, making the extra money worth handing over.

Well the answer is (in typical politician fashion) yes and no. If you are a user who spends a lot of time encoding voice or video, or rendering 3D models, then moving to 4 processors will definitely make sense. These are highly CPU intensive applications, and you can see significant reductions in run times. If however you are what I would call a normal user such as myself, then there is very little benefit of moving to a Quad Core at present.

How about gamers you ask, well for these people too it has been shown in many tests, that with the current generation of games that there is little point of moving to a Quad Core. So if as a gamer you are looking for a new rig then my advice would be to stick to Core 2 Duo for now, but make sure you have the capability to upgrade to Quad when the games take better advantage of the multiple cores.

So if you are just off to render you latest 3D model but are short on power then the highly rated Intel Core 2 Duo Quad Q660 may be just the ticket!