[photon]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

also understanding things like what exactly the Dual core and quad processors are and how they differ from what I have (an older pentium) - they still say they are only 2.4 or 3 ghz but are some how waaaay faster....

Dual core and quad core just means there's multiple processors in the system all running at the indicated speed. So in theory it should be faster because there's more processors to process the instructions that are the software.

In practice it's another one of those "it depends" answers. Most software does not take any advantage of multiple cores right now, especially games. Check out some reviews on the Q6600 (anandtech is a good site), and you'll see that some benchmarks are almost the same for a dual core and a quad core Intel system of the same GHz rating. So if gaming (not media encoding and stuff like that) is the primary use, you probably won't see much difference from a quad core over a dual core, in fact you could get a faster GHz dual core and see better performance in games.

All that said, going forward more and more games are going to take advantage of the multiple core systems, so it does "future proof" you to some extent.

I noticed in worth and photons setups no sound card... could that not create a bottle neck of sorts in a gaming system??

Only because I was pretty sure the motherboard came with an onboard sound. The sound quality on those onboard ones can be pretty bad sometimes though, so another $100 bux for a decent sound card would probably be a good idea. Gamers tend to buy Creative Labs stuff, but it's a love-hate relationship (good cards, HORRIBLE drivers).

And a good soundcard can actually improve your game performance, though usually only by a few percentage points.

@Byrns - monitors - nto sure , not even sure I'd want dual... maybe just a wide screen - 23ish inch... had not really decided... also I play any of those games... FPS or strategy are up my ally, I bought D&D online but my pc could not run it... so a MMORPG is not out of the question either...

I really like the 20" 2007FPW from Dell, good gaming monitor for a good price with a nice resolution (1680 x 1050). I like widescreen for my non-work computer, good for gaming and movies.