Rhetoric Camel > "Should I be settling with dual core or should I just keep saving that extra money to go for the quad core? 32 bit or 64 bit? The more processors how does that work with the RAM? With dual core would 2 gigs of ram be split up, 1 gig per processor? Would that feel any slower than my current 3.2GHz processor with 2 gigs? I'm kind of confused now with all this dual and quad core crap, haha."

For the processor, if its inside your budget go for a fast quad core processor, that way, you'll get good performance on games that are not multithreaded (meaning they run only on one core) as well as multitasking (becuase of the four cores). I have no idea how much it would cost though, its been quite a while since I've picked up a catalog. Buying a fast quad core processor means its going to last longer two, many of the new and future games are going to be able to run on multiple cores, so having lots of fast cores is a win.

As for 32- or 64-bit, go for 64-bit. 32-bit is completely obsolete for a gaming and Maya box. I don't think they make 32-bit processors anymore anyways.

As for the processors and the RAM, well in most systems (including all PCs) with a multicore processor (or with multiple single-core or multicore processors for the matter), the RAM is not split up according to how many cores/processors there are. The RAM is shared, accessable by every core/processor.

Hopes this answers a few of your questions.