proccessors

Im looking to buying a computer for my graduation.  What kind of comp should I go with(for gaming). How long will a Core two duo thing work before being obsolete?

Forget about Duo's, Quads are in the very near future.SaDiZTiKStyLeZ

lol ya, for 1000+ dollars.  not exactly something a college student can afford; I know I cant.

A good core 2 duo will last you atleast 4 years.  I recommend the E6400, as it has the 8x multiplayer which aids in overclocking.

Buy it, run it stock for three years, then when the warranty expires overclock the hell out of it to stay current (performance-wise) with whatever is out at the time.

Hell, I bought a socket 478 P4 2.8GHz when the Pentium D's were coming out and people called me a fool, but it and my geforce 6600GT were able to run any game, from Deus Ex and Diablo 2 to Oblivion and GRAW.

i'm on my 4th year with my pentium 4 3.2ghz

it's still doing great. 

Games right now dont take the dual cores full advantages Because they are still sigle threaded based(single core).04dcarraher

You joking right? Games are already being optimized for multi cores.

[QUOTE="04dcarraher"]Games right now dont take the dual cores full advantages Because they are still sigle threaded based(single core).SaDiZTiKStyLeZ

You joking right? Games are already being optimized for multi cores.

he's half right, games do have to be mutlithreaded to take full advantage of multi-cores. and your right, most developers realize this and are now writing multi threaded app's. Games that arent multi threaded use processor affinity which isnt as good but its the next best thing, This is what most older and some newer games use.

he's half right, games do have to be mutlithreaded to take full advantage of multi-cores. and your right, most developers realize this and are now writing multi threaded app's. Games that arent multi threaded use processor affinity which isnt as good but its the next best thing, This is what most older and some newer games use.CYSYKO

The idiot developers who are too stubborn to work on whats now, and software released before multicores, were not counted in that statement.

I was going to use an example of the significant difference between games that are out now, performing on a single core compared to multi-core, but i shouldnt need to. Quads already outperform duals, even though the software has not been optimized for it, yet.

[QUOTE="CYSYKO"]

he's half right, games do have to be mutlithreaded to take full advantage of multi-cores. and your right, most developers realize this and are now writing multi threaded app's. Games that arent multi threaded use processor affinity which isnt as good but its the next best thing, This is what most older and some newer games use.SaDiZTiKStyLeZ

The idiot developers who are too stubborn to work on whats now, and software released before multicores, were not counted in that statement.

I was going to use an example of the significant difference between games that are out now, performing on a single core compared to multi-core, but i shouldnt need to. Quads already outperform duals, even though the software has not been optimized for it, yet.

totally agree. although it probably is hard to keep up with all the new hardware advances, sometimes they dont even make the effort.

    Keep in mind im not knocking ALL game developers, but when youve developed a game for 6 years (STALKER) and it cant even run on both of my cores... c'mon! 

Supreme Commander is a Multi Core based game.Look at the gamespot review.

Core 2 Duo E6600 (E6420) I think its enough o atleast 4 years

I think the most important thing to remember is get a good motherboard.

I would much rather get a socket 775, 680i chipset mobo and a 200 dollar E6400 now and be able to upgrade my processor and still get a current processor because I bought a newer motherboard.

Intel's Quad -core processors are good but AMD's are supposed to be good too in the future.