Originally posted by: rash219
Windows Media Player, Firefox(+4 tabs) and uTorrent (in the bkgrd) running at the same time.......
You don't need multiple hard drives to run the following 3 tasks. Right now at work I have open:
1. Amicus IV law program
2. 7 Internet explorer windows
3. 4 Firefox windows
4. 8 Excel documents
5. Power Point presentation
6. Windows explorer folders
7. Microsoft Outlook
8. Adobe Acrobat Reader
9. SETI@home running at 100%.
All of this is taking 750MB of ram on this 768MB single-core 2.8ghz Intel Celeron D 330 processor. I can tell you the system doesn't feel as fast as my C2D @ 3.4ghz used to when I had the same programs opened, but the speed difference isn't that significant. Why? I don't consider any of the above other than SETI (and even then it adjusts load based on system requests from 0-100% allowing full cpu speed to other tasks as requested) as multi-tasking.
Multi-tasking would be something like Encoding a video, converting MP3, and running Photoshop in the background while playing Quake 4 all at the same time. That's where QuadCore will shine. Still, for the other tasks you mentioned like image editing, web design and photoshop, I'd get a Quad. However, if you are upgrading from single core, even a E4400 dual core for $125 would have an impact and you could upgrade again in a year if you don't want to spend that much $ on a processor today.