Maxit Mag

CPUs with two cores were introduced in 2005 and made popular in 2006 after the release of Intel's new offerings and the price war that ensued shortly after that. This year will probably see a similar situation when AMD launches Phenom and Intel makes it's move, only this time we will be talking about four cores, not just two. And all this while gamers still wonder if a second core is of any use at all. 

Legion Hardware has an article about CPU scaling performance when using different Geforce 8 cards. Conclusions are easy to anticipate, but comparing an Intel Celeron 440 (2.00GHz, one core, 512Kb) with a Core 2 Duo E4400 (2.00GHz, two cores, 1Mb) paints a rather clear picture of how an up to date game like Far Cry can take advantage of the additional processing power, no matter what kind of a GPU you have. In fact, is intriguing that the cheaper one gets the bigger boost (67% at 1280x1024), when all would point to it as the major bottleneck.

8600 GTS buyers beware, if you play new games, they are likely to benefit from dual core CPUs, even if it's trough patches (Far Cry). In this case, you better buy at least a Core 2 Duo from the "E" series along with your graphics card.