Dual core vs Quad core for gaming

[checkmate]

I am a really gamer and i love to play games very much, right now i am using Intel Pentium 4 and i really want to upgrade my system. When i ask my friends some of them said me to go with Intel Dual core and some told me to go with Intel Quad core. Most of the time i will be using my system for gaming purpose only so can anyone tell me should i go for Dual core or Quad core ?

[Ramchandra]

I would suggest you to go with with Intel Dual core because it has multi-core technology provides new levels of energy efficient performance, enabled by advanced parallel processing and hafnium-based 45nm technology. If nothing else, it lets you gracefully terminate an application that has gone haywire, consuming all available CPU time. It's like having a backup CPU in reserve, waiting to jump in and assist as necessary. But for most software, you hit a point of diminishing returns very rapidly after two cores.

[Francesca]

Normally Quad core processor provides visualization workloads enabled by powerful multi-core technology. Core-based microprocessors do not have Hyper-threading Technology found in Pentium 4 processors. This is because the core micro architecture is a descendant of the P6 micro architecture used by Pentium III, Celeron and Xeon processors based on it. Comparing the first 2 links I think it is really worth the money to get the quad. Again:The power is twice but not always used totally and it is not the top of the line.the top is the core i7 from Intel.

[JamesB]

I would suggest you to go for Quad core if money doesn't matter for you because it's the latest technology by Intel and in future there is no need to upgrade your processor according to me this will last for at least next 2-3 years and if you don't have much budget then you can also go with Dual core,if you are taking it then make sure you take a good graphic card.