Core 2 Duo processors

Intel Core 2 Duo, performance rated, has a better architecture and over all speed. You can look at the intel benchmarking results. I think it's great how the pins for core 2 duo processors are on the motherboard, the cpu is more resistant to damage that way.



Core 2 Duo vs. Pentium 4
Core 2 Duo is much more stable than Pentium 4 when overclocking, but it depends on what you want to do. If you want a gaming system with raw power, a Pentium 4 would be a very nice and cheap CPU. If however you need multiple cores, the Core 2 Duo would be better. A nice way to imagine is if you want to host a game server and play the game on the same computer. It's not recommended that you host a dedicated game server and then play on the same machine, but if you host the server on 1 core you can play on the other core.