Single core is the way to go at the moment mainly due to current pricing of the X2's. So if your in the market for a new system check to see if the motherboard will take X2's at a future date, when they are nice and cheap Duel Core Vs Duel Processors Q) Which is better ? A) Duel Core. Why ? Simple duel processors have to commuicate via the motherboard, which puts a lag on the system. AMD have gone one better than Intel by reducing the lag between processor and memory controller, by adding that to the processor cores too. Q) Will my software run faster ? A) Yes & No. In order to use duel core/processor the OS and software must be written to use multi-tread multi processor environments. XP and Win2k both support duel core/processors by default. But only in 32bit mode. XP64 supports duel core/processors by default. 32bit and 64bit modes. Most software will see some improvement as one core deals with the thing hand and the other runs the OS, virus checker, messager etc. Q) Should I upgrade XP/2K to XP64 ? A) At this moment in time there is very little advantage in doing so and lots of disadvantages. The advantages are very small, yes you`ll have drivers that run in 64bit mode, so things will run a bit better. Its a new platform so software writers will adding 64bit to next gen of software. The disadvantages, lots. No 64bit drivers for older hardware. Older software may or may not run, crash etc. If it runs it will only be run in 32bit mode. In time XP64 will be the way to go, just not yet. The AMD X2 will not see significant advantages in most programs due to the lack of multi-threading and more importantly multi-cpu support. In fact according to AMD the key applications that will gain a dual core scaling advantage are: * 3DS Max 6 ~80% performance gain * LightWave 8 ~70% to 85% performance gain * Canopus ProCoder, Procoder Express ~68% faster MPG to DVD * Windows Media Encoder ~76% faster DV to WMV * Mandelbrot generator C/C++ runs ~99% faster * Adobe Premiere Pro ~17% - 60% faster depending on the project * Cyberlink Power Director ~85% MPEG2, ~90% WMV, ~99% DivX * Windows MovieMaker ~42% * Photo Shop depends on the filters used (not all filters are multithreaded)