Which of these processors is the fastest, Quad or 2 duo?

Quad Core will excel at: - CAD - 3D rendering - Video encoding - Heavy photoshop work - Heavy multitasking If the future programs and games will be written to utilize multiple cores, but currently most programs only use 1 core. The exception tends to be 3D and video applications which are already optimized for multiple cores and will benefit greatly. Dual core still reigns in the area of gaming because the dual core chips tend to be clocked higher than the quad cores which use the same microarchitecture. For every day tasks (web browsing, word processing, etc), you only need dual core. However, the E8500 is the current top of the line dual core, probably excessive unless you are a heavy gamer. If you want lastability - go with the quad. As I said, it will age better as more programs begin to utilize more than 1 core at a time. Also, they're great for multitasking. You can run many large programs at the same time without much lag and you PC will be very snappy.  more