ok, this will sorta seem like a repeat question to some people as they already answered it to some extent. i recently upgraded from a 3700+ to a 4200+ dual core, and then bought a new motherboard that can overclock. pretty much everybody who reviewed this before said that for gameing the 3700+ is way better, but i got the 4200 (and i swapped it out of someone elses computer in trade for my 3700, and can get my 3700 back at any time for those who think i just blew my money away on a new processor)now my 4200 is currently running at 2.5 ghz, and is going even higher if possible. now my question is would the 3700 be faster than the 4200 overclocked? and which would oc higher? i want extreme gaming proformance and multitasking, which i know that my 4200 does unbeleiveably. Im looking to mainly play the elder scrolls 4 oblivion, and it has dual core support, my next question is would it be faster with dual core or single. (3700 vs 4200) i would like links to web sites comparing these two if anyone knows any. thanx Amd 3700+ 2Gig Corsair Msi-Ms-7184 mobo ATI Radeon x850xt pciXpress 256mb Antec Trupower 430watt Creative soundblaster pci 200Gb seagate IDE 7200rpm

Single core processors are the best processors to run games on. But if you do a lot of multi-tasking and I mean a lot of multi-tasking then dual core is the way to go. What do you do more of is the question. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7800GT SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlon64-x2/index.x?pg=5 There is some benchmarks on your processor vs other processors like the AMD Athlon 64 3800+. According to Doom 3 benchmarks you went backwards in gaming preformance. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7800GT SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

From what I've read, Oblivion is one of the only games that really benefits from dual core. The problem is the 4200+ Manchester only has 512k L2 (x 2)...the 3700+ San Diego that you gave away (against our recommendations) has 1MB L2. The link that Cobra provided doesn't list the 3700+ for comparison. The following chart will show the performance gap a little better. It really depends on the application, but when it comes to gaming, the 3700+ is significantly faster than the 4200+ X2: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page29.html Like Cobra said, it all depends on what you use your PC for. So unless you do HEAVY multi-tasking, you probably downgraded rather than upgraded. And if you do multi-task a LOT, I'd be interested in hearing what programs you usually run simultaneously.

i usually mulitask Dr. divx, itunes, firefox, maybe 3 or 4 others that ill pop on or off, and occasionally a game to keep me occupied, like the sims 2. (dr. divx isnt all the time though) Amd 3700+ 2Gig Corsair Msi-Ms-7184 mobo ATI Radeon x850xt pciXpress 256mb Antec Trupower 430watt Creative soundblaster pci 200Gb seagate IDE 7200rpm

ur fine...crank that baby up to about 2700mhz....ur video card is whats gonna decide mostly how the game runs. i'm running a 4400+ at 2700 with two gigs of ddr500 oc'ed to 270 1t ....its really about ur card. a 7800gt will play most games at max settings...a 7900 will get alittle closer to most games....and if u want maxed out settings in oblivion ur gonna need sli period. at least 7800gtsli and preferable 7900. the processor is fine...i'd keep the dual core but for gaming ur not gonna tell diddly squat difference with the processors...just how fast ur harddrives are and ur video card.