Well my next PC will have 4 cores because I plan on reserving one core to feed Windows and all its resource hogging processes. I'll have another core to keep all the poorly written spyware/adware busy and then I'll have one core to actually run the programs I want. The 4th core will act as a hot spare in case one of my cores breaks down or the next version of windows becomes even more excessively core hungry.

Well, since I already have 8 now it probably won't be until 16 is out...and it makes sense to. Heaven help those programmers...

I picked 8 because by the time I get a new processor 8 cores will probably be the norm.

At this point, there is no point for most uses for more than 2 cores. Certainly for gaming. The money is better spent in other places.

My next PC will have...

*holds pinky near mouth*

One Million Cores.

2 or 4. depends on the market in 2 years.

Probably 4, assuming I can get my C2D laptop back to working reliably as my main PC until around when I planned to replace it (late 2009). I think quads will be in upper-midrange notebooks by then.

If I end up getting something new this year it'll be a cheap dual-core to tide me over until mainstream notebook Nehalem.

This one is impossible for me to answer. I see no reason to upgrade either my MBP or my desktop PC until 2010. Both of my current systems are Core 2 Duo.

by the time I upgrade, I will do one of the following:

(1) get a new MBP and upgrade the CPU in my home-built PC. In that case, I'll probably get a quad core in each.

(2) get a mac pro and a macbook air. In that case, I'll probably get 16 or more cores in the mac pro and 2 cores in the macbook air.

which path I take depends entirely on the quality of windows games run under VMWare and/or Parallels. Right now, neither of those really allows for playing of Windows games in virtualization. If that changes, then I'll go with route (2). If it doesn't, I'll go with route (1).

It's hard to call my PC 'next' since it's usually a change of just one or two parts at a time. I'll take next to mean a platform change, as in mobo+CPU with a new socket.

Anybody else more excited about disk/memory I/O improvements over graphics/CPU?

I'm ignoring the plethora of embedded CPUs within other parts of the PC chipset! ;)

On the other hand, I'm not going to be buying a new PC for a couple of years so I'm sure quad-core will be cheaptastic by then yet good enough.

Do virtual machines really use any of the extensions Intel and AMD cared to develop or those are only there to fill a line in the features list and MHz and numer of cores are what to look for? Thx

Well this article is referring to PC's in general and not just gaming. I for one have a quad core and i am already using 3 cores for virtualization. Pretty soon i will be needing a 8 core cpu that does 16 threads and maybe with 16gb or 32gb of ram. The way i use these virtual machines requires alot of muscle. You guys are treating pc's like if its just made for games. Yes it can truly play games and then some more. Think outside of gaming for once.

i build low-power systems. Everything MUST be under 100W at load.

So, I have two Shuttle SD11G5s running 1.76GHz Pentium-M Dothans (55W & 60W), a Shuttle SB75S with an undervolted 2.66 GHz P4-M (80W), a recently-built system with a 35W Core Celeron (90W).

I also have some old Motion tablet PCs (40W) and some VIA boards (50W with video cards in the PCI slots), but those don't get used much.

Point being: I'm one of the people that will probably keep buying single core as long as that's the most power-efficient option available. And while I know that AMD has some dual-core EEs that run @ 45W, that's quite a lot when I'm budgeting myself to <100W @ load.

I've pretty much settled that any new CPU's I buy will be Quad core. I tend to buy systems for home that do R&D type tasks, like hosting many different servers for virutalization, etc. Since I tend to hold onto systems for my home lab for a few years (it's about 3-5 years between wholesale rip & replace time) quad cores make sense for the long-term. In 3-5 years a 4 core machine will still run applications just fine, surely better than a 2 or 1 CPU machine.

I figure you just get more life out of more cores. Same idea as in the enterprise, more CPUs you have, should equal longer system life or at least the ability to be more easily repurposed.

I want a 10 GHz+ single core!!! What's going on with Moore's law?

I'm more interested in building quiet, low-power PCs these days. I want the hardware to idle with low power usage. For gaming, which is definitely rather rare for me these days, I don't mind if it spikes up a bunch. But I don't want another rig that sits there and idles at ~175W like my 8800GTX + C2Q. That's just ridiculous. That's more than my full-size fridge/freezer uses, by the way.

So I really consider dual cores the way to go right now. They are more power efficient in every way than a quad unless you peg the 4 cores continuously for some app. Dualies deliver the noticeable multitasking improvement over single core CPUs, so they do offer tangible benefits in every PC, unlike a quad. Maybe in the future CPUs will have much smarter power management.

I think that most people are either about to buy a new PC (4 cores) or have just got one and so can wait for more cores to turn up (8 cores)

I'm currently eying a UMPC, but am waiting to see what, if any, impact Atom has on the market. At the least, prices should drop some with the current generation when the new generation arrives. It's a one-core market and unlikely to change any time soon.

Four or more. As others have said, by the time I upgrade quads will be a baseline, more or less. So four at minimum, 6 or more if there's an attractive option in that range.

I'm buying my next CPU right now (Athlon X2 5000 Black Edition, 2.6GHz w/ unlocked multiplier) - $72 shipped w/Newegg Promo Code: EMCAGBABF
I have a nice cooler (Thermalright UE-120), so I hope to run it at 3.2GHz under load.

2 cores is sufficient for what I do (home/office productivity, light C/C++ & Python development, Ubuntu64 8.04, occasional DVD, audio encoding/decoding)

Since I hope to get 2-3 more years from my current X2 3800, I'm betting on 4 or 8 cores in my next build, just because by then 4 core (at least) will be mainstream and well within the price point, and hopefully it'll be utilized by Windows 7 and games by then.

I recently acquired a Q9300, so the next PC is still some years away. I do a lot of media encoding which works quite well with 4 cores, but definitely worse than it was with 2 and in most cases the harddisk starts to be the limiting factor or the uneven thread load distribution, so I guess 4 or 8 will be a good estimate. I will still vote for 4, as for 8 there are several other software related boundaries which must be removed until then.

2 cores. I simply have no use for more. It's only on very rare occasions I actually use both cores maxed out even now.

i got two now (e6600)
will most likely get an octocore(8) but if high end quad cores can be had for >150 in a year ill jus get that

I want one of those Expensive Edition Nehalems with 8 cores and 16 threads. I'm routinely slapping down all four of my Yorkfield cores with load, so I could parallelize out nicely.

Video encoding and Virtualization, friends to multicore.

Is this physical or logical cores? I plan on building again about a year from now or so, and assuming I use a Nehalem CPU (which seems likely ATM), it will be four of the former and eight of the latter.

It will depend on how much those cores will be priced and on how much wattage they will need to dissipate. And how much time will last on the market AMD... For my needs my X2 3600+ seems plenty enough.

Don't plan on upgrading anytime soon, but my NEXT machine should be a quad.

Probably four, but only because I expect it to be totally mainstream by the time I build my next computer whenever. I don't game a lot anymore and so I'm not too worried.