For the past few months I have been considering the idea of building a dual-core system, primarily for gaming. Although dual-core processors have not shown any real benefits over single-core in gaming applications, this should change in the near future. As drivers and games become better optimized to use multiple cores, the huge improvements we are all waiting for should follow.
All of my previous gaming computers have been overclocked for maximum performance, not to mention high anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings become addictive after a while. However using these in the latest most demanding games can be quite the frame rate killer. Therefore when migrating to a dual-core configuration I wanted a processor that would give me the best bang for my buck, this is an article for those looking at using either an AMD or Intel dual-core processor in a gaming machine that will be overclocked.