I am planning to purchase a new computer with either an Intel 820 2.8GHZ dual-core chip WITHOUT hyperthreading, or Intel 630 3GHZ single core with hyperthreading. I understand the advantages of a dual core running multiple applications, but because I (sometimes, but usually) do not run more than one application at a time my question is slightly different.
Given two COMPUTERS with the same RAM, bus speed, cache, etc. etc., will the performance of a single application running along with the usual background utilities (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc) be better with a dual core? Or is a single with hyperthreading just as good? I was thinking that with a dual core, one would run the app while the other would handle the utilities?  Utilities are probably not a very big issue now, but as they get increasingly intricate in the coming years, that may change.
My typical usage is 40% microsoft office, 40% web, and 20% gaming.
Thanks
EVEN though Hyperthreading has longer PIPELINES to get more done in a given amount of time, dual-core may still be the better choice, since hyperthreading forces a single-core to consume more power while offering a very little performance increase.

[glb]Gizmo73[/glb]