Hi folks,I have been following the technology over the last few months, and it certainly appears that dual/quad cores are the way of the future (for the time being anyway). I currently run a middle of the road to low end pc (in my mind) which consists of the following:P4 2.8GHz w/HT Socket 478 CPU w/512k cacheAsus P4P800 Deluxe Motherboard1GB OCZ (4 x 256MB) Dual Channel MemoryATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGPI just received an email from Tiger Direct with a Thanksgiving deal which consists of:Intel DG965RYCK Socket 775 ATX MotherboardIntel Core 2 Duo E6300 OEMBoth items for $249.99 ($299 minus $50 rebate). This also includes Ghost Recon - AWF, but that means nothing here. Following this link for the deal: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/se...SRCCODE=WEM1245My question is this, since I am not totally up on Core 2 Duo vs older single core technology.......Will the E6300 Core 2 Duo be faster than my current P4 2.8GHz cpu, even though each core on the duo are only 1.86GHz? I realize that the chip will excel greatly with apps/games that are developed for dual core technology, but would my current P4 perform better within FSX than the E6300? All this is of course assuming stock clock speeds. I realize that the Core 2's are great for overclocking. Especially the E6300/E6400. My beef right now is that I have a brand new ATI X1900XT sitting in my drawer which I cannot use since it is a PCIe card, and my current P4P800 only has AGP. Perhaps I would be better selling the XT and going out and buying a faster AGP card with more memory? If someone could set me straight on the comparisons of both my current chip and the E6300, I would very much appreciate it. For that price, you can't go wrong really. Although this upgrade would be a stepping stone until further breakthroughs are reported for FSX and a bigger upgrade may come this summer. It's hard enough being married and trying to convince your wife that you need an upgrade to virtually fly, but when your wife is also an accountant, the challenge is that much more greater! :-)Thanks to all for any assistance/advice you can give!Gord NoseworthySt. John's, NLCanada** Avid simmer and real world pilot**

Even in single core applications, the E6300 will spank your 2.8Ghz P4 into the middle of next week.Check this out:http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2795andhttp://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802Regards,Glenn

Currently the Conroes will spank any CPU on the market into the next solar system :( Its a justifiable upgrade.

"First, the spankings, then the ora..." errrrr, never mind.Bob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Santiago de Chile