So many variable go into making hardware decisions that you have to be fluent in your usage to pick hardware correctly. Really dual cores are only needed for gaming because games are being designed to take advantage of them. That said, for a processor all gamers still need good L2 or L3 caches regardless of the game's design. Thats a simple function that hasnt changed. I still have one single core tower and a dual core tower at home. I call both gaming towers but if I do anything for work I'm using the dual core because of the partioning of the work load.