Would it be a good idea to buy a core 2 quad processor for gaming?

I have heard that most games have been optimized for core 2 extreme. But if I wanted to save a few dollars and get a core 2 quad, would my gaming experience still be awesome?

Would it be a good idea to buy a core 2 quad processor for gaming?
The only 3 factors for buying CPUs for gaming are the your budget, motherboard socket, and your PC's size (I was able to get a 3.2Ghz Intel Pentium Extreme Edition Processor inside a Antec Super LANBOY using a ThermalTake TMG i2 cooler). I think it is a good processor, but ask about other's experience with the proceesor (best way to do that is ask Vista users for the sub score to their CPU, the highest being 5.9 at the moment). If you plan to overclock or put it in a small case than you might want to think about getting cooling options. Oh and to calm you down: RAM isnt really a factor when making CPU selections.
Reply:Yes it a good idea to buy it for Gaming I own one my self so trust me i play Call of Duty 4 all day no lag and i only have 2 GB of ram. One more thing Quad is Extremely easy to Overclock, i got it to 3.2Ghz in 1 day stable, also if you using 4GB ram you will need 64-bit OS Vista.





here is the link to my 3DMark Score See it your self


http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3d...
Reply:Yes, all the new game releases are optimised to run on multple cores, this makes quad processors at least 10Ghz for these games, and with programs that aren't optimised they will be run on one core while your game gets a full core to itself.
Reply:Well, yeah... so long as you make sure you have bazillions of tons of RAM. (the non tech answer is at least 4Gbytes of RAM)
Reply:Are you running Vista 64? If so, then no. Windows XP doesn't support multi-threading in applications so... It's really kind of pointless to even have a multi-core processor if you're going to run XP. You need Vista to take advantage of all the new advances in multi-threading applications (having a single process running on multiple cores).





Will you still see some increase in speed? Probably. XP will still allocate separate processes to different cores, so your Anti-Virus will run on a single core, and your game on another one...