Come back to me when we have applications that actually support quad-core processing.

It’s fast becoming one of the greatest marketing exercises the IT industry has seen in a long time. Quad-core processors and quad-core based systems are taking the gaming market by storm. That probably makes some sense since word got out that the new Half-Life 2 engine supports multi-core processing and also given that the gaming fraternity are known for buying up big and early.

But what’s really surprising me is that quad-core systems are now being flogged off as general-purpose PCs.

I had a PC User reader email me not long ago with two system offerings from two different vendors – one offered an excellent well-balanced system with a fast Core 2 Duo processor and the other vendor a less well featured system but with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor instead.

While the reader asked my opinion, he seemed already keen on the quad-core system.

Unfortunately, it seems people are being bamboozled by multi-core processors, thinking that the more cores there are, the faster their applications will run.

In theory, that’s correct but in practice, it’s a very, very dubious assumption.

While multi-core chips do enable you to do more per clock cycle, the problem is that you need the operating system to understand multi-core processing as well as the applications.

I’m sure at this point there’ll be a few people saying “yeah, but Windows XP and Windows Vista support multi-core chips”. That might be the case but I can tell you from benchmarking experience that quad-core processors are little more than a marketer’s dream at the moment.

In Australia at the moment, you can pick up a dual-core Core 2 Duo E6850 and a quad-core Core 2 Quad Q6600 for about the same price. Now I’d go for the Core 2 Duo E6850 any day.

I’ve heard more than a few so called “analysts” and journalists say that “speeds and feeds are no longer important” but until we get those true multi-core-supporting applications, speeds and feeds matter a damn hell of a lot.

The Core 2 Duo E6850 roars along at 3GHz while the Quad Q6600 tops out at 2.4GHz. Given the similar in the base architecture, that clock speed difference actually makes a heluva difference in terms of real-world application speed. It doesn’t matter whether you’re encoding video, running Photoshop or simply ripping an audio CD, when the basic architecture is the same, clock speed makes the difference and at the moment, the dual-core E6850 is well and truly ahead of the Q6600.

In my day job as freelance IT journalist and Contributing Editor to Australian PC User magazine, I see and benchmark a lot of computers and of late, I’ve seen a number of quad-core Q6600 systems.

Given the typical applications we all use, there just isn’t any value for the average consumer to jump on the quad-core processor bandwagon.

I recently had an interesting briefing with an AMD Australia representative who gave me a rundown on AMD’s upcoming Phenom processor line. While it is littered with multi-core processor, he agrees that the market for quad-core is the gaming and enthusiast market and that it would be left to applications such as AutoCAD to make full use of quad-core CPUs.

So if you’re about to cough up for a new PC, can I caution you to think carefully before you buy a quad-core system. Yes, one day we’ll have quad-core applications but by the time they arrive, quad-core CPUs (if they’re still around) will look nothing like today’s offerings.

If you want real speed, go for Intel’s Core 2 Duo E6850 or better still, if you’re on a budget and don’t mind blowing your warranty, try the Pentium Dual Core E2160 and overclock the daylights out of it.