I'm going to throw a tiny wrench in the works here.
While most of the guys here are right that a dual core is fine for titles developed from the ground up for the PC, titles that are ported over from the Xbox 360 will generally utilize all four cores in a quad because the 360 has a triple core CPU. Unfortunately, the devs sometimes cant be assed to do a proper port and make their games run properly on dual cores.
An example I can think of off the top of my head is GTAIV. That game will NOT run at any acceptable frame rate on a dual core, but put a low end Q6600 quad in your PC and it suddenly becomes silky smooth and a CPU monitor will show good usage across all four cores.
While obviously the devs/their bosses are to blame for this, you may not be able to play at acceptable frame rates some otherwise great titles because of this.
While most of the guys here are right that a dual core is fine for titles developed from the ground up for the PC, titles that are ported over from the Xbox 360 will generally utilize all four cores in a quad because the 360 has a triple core CPU. Unfortunately, the devs sometimes cant be assed to do a proper port and make their games run properly on dual cores.
An example I can think of off the top of my head is GTAIV. That game will NOT run at any acceptable frame rate on a dual core, but put a low end Q6600 quad in your PC and it suddenly becomes silky smooth and a CPU monitor will show good usage across all four cores.
While obviously the devs/their bosses are to blame for this, you may not be able to play at acceptable frame rates some otherwise great titles because of this.
